3 


: 

fornia 
nal 


^|||||||l|: 


HlMm' 


M 


^m 


■,}xiift:  ■ 


iM»»l^mii 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


Portraits  of  the  Eighteenth  Century 

Historic  and  Literary 

By  C  a.  SAINTE-BEUVE 


Uniform  with  "  Portraits  of  the  Seventeenth  Century  " 
Two  Tarts.     8°.     tVith  about  jo  Illtistrations.     Sold  sepa- 
rately.     Each,  $2.^0  net 


TART  ONE 

TRANSLATED     BY 

Katharine   P.   Wormeley 

Duchesse  du  Maine  Marquise  du  Deffand 

Mme.  de  Staal-Delaunay  Earl  of  Chesterfield 

Le  Sage  Benjamin  Franklin 

Montesquieu  Mme.  Graffigny 

Adrienne  le  Couvreur  Abbe  Barthelemy 

Voltaire  Louis  XV. 

TART  TIVO 

translated  by 
George  Burnham  Ives 

Rousseau  Goethe 

Buffon  Prevost 

Grimm  Beaumarchais 

Diderot  St.  Pierre 

Mme.  de  Lambert  Marie  Antoinette 

Mme.    Necker  Frederick  the  Great 


G.  P.   PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


LOUIS  XV. 
After  the  painting  by  J.  B.  le  Moyne. 


Portraits 


of  the 


Eighteenth  Century 

Historic  and  Literary 


By 

C.  A.  Sainte-Beuve 

Translated  by 

Katharine  P.  Wormeley 

With  a  Critical  Introduction  by 
Edmond  Scherer 


Duchesse  du  Maine— Mme.  de  Staal  — Le  Sage  — Montesquieu— 
Adrienne  Le  Couvreur— Voltaire— Mme.  Du  Deffand— Chesterfield 
—  Mme.    Geoffrin— Franklin  —  Louis     XV.  —  Abbe    Barth61emy 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York   and   London 
1905 


Copyright,  1905 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Ubc  "Rntchcrbocher  prese,  "Bcw  ]3orfe 


y 


Sl5p 
V.t 


TTransIator's  IRote. 

In  the  following  essays — taken  from  the  Causeries 
du  Luiidi,  the  Portraits  de  Femmes,  and  the  Portraits 
Litter  aires  —  certain  passages  have  been  omitted, 
which  relate  chiefly  to  editions  that  have  long  passed 
away,  or  to  discussions  on  style.  Also,  where  two 
or  more  essays  on  the  same  person  have  appeared  in 
the  different  series,  they  are  here  put  together,  omit- 
ting repetitions.  The  article  on  Louis  XV  in  this 
volume,  for  instance,  is  compiled  from  four  of  Saint- 
Beuve's  articles. 

The  Causeries  du  Lundi  are  published  in  fifteen 
volumes;  eleven  of  which  contain  the  first  series;  the 
other  four  volumes  contain  the  later,  or  nouveaux 
Limdis. 


■m    ji   r~\  r-  jb  r—  r\ 


Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction— Sainte-Beuve,  by  Edmond 

oCHERER  ••«•••  9 

I. — DucHEssE  Du  Maine  (1676-1753)       .         .      2^ 
(Louise-Ben^dicte  de  Bourbon) 

II. — Madame  DE  Staal-Delaunay  (1681-1750)       33 

III. — Le  Sage  (1668-1 747)         ,         .        •       •      77 
(Alain-Rene) 

IV. — Montesquieu  (i689-i7=>=^)         .        .        .     109 

(Charles  de  Secondat,    Baron  de  La 
Brede) 

V. — Adrienne  Le  CouvREUR  (1690-1730)         .     159 

VI. — Voltaire  (1694-1778)      .        .        .        .187 
(Francois-Marie  Arouet) 

VII. — Marquise  Du  Deffand  (1697-1780) .        .     239 
(Marie  de  Vichy-Chamrond) 

VIII. — Earl  of  Chesterfield  (1694-1773)  .        .     285 
(Philip  DoR^4ER  Stanhope) 

IX. — Benjamin  Franklin  ( 1 704-1 790)       .         .    311 


vi  Contents 


PAGE 


X. — Madame  Geoffrin  (1698-1777)        .        ,     379 

XI.— The  Abbe  Barthelemy  (17 16-1795)         -     4^7 

XII.— Louis  XV.  (171 5-1774)  ....    443 


PAGE 


Illustrations 

Louis  Xy       .  .  .  .        Frontispiece 

After  the  painting  by  J.  B.  le  Moyne. 

Duchesse  du  Maine      ....       24 

From  a  copper  engraving. 

Madame  de  Staal-Delaiinay        .        .      54 

From  the  painting  by  Mignard. 

Le  Sage "j^ 

From  the  engraving  by  Leloir. 

Montesquieu no 

After  the  painting  by  Deveria. 

Adrienne  Le  Couvreur         .        .        .160 

From  an  old  painting. 

Voltaire 188 

After  the  painting  by  Ferney. 

Madame  du  Chdtelet   .        .        .        .198 

From  a  copper  engraving. 


Vll 


viii  miustrations 

PAGE 

Marquise  Dii  Deffand  ....     240 

After  the  painting  by  Chardin. 

Lord  Chesterfield  .        .        .        .286 

From  an  old  painting. 

Benjamin  Franklin      .        .        .        .312 

From  an  oil  painting  in  the  possession  of  the  His- 
torical Society  of  Pennsylvania. 

Madame  Geoff rin         .        .        .        .    3S0 

After  the  painting  by  G.  Staal. 

fean  Jacques  Barthelemy     .        .        .    408 

After  the  bust  by  Houdon. 


tIntro^uct!om 


VOL.  I.— I. 


Sainte*3Beuvc. 

BY 

M.  Edmond  Scherer. 

THE  death  of  a  man  like  Sainte-Beuve  produces 
two  effects.  The  first  is,  to  make  him  greater; 
he  is  no  longer  there,  we  have  suddenly  be- 
come his  posterity:  he  appears  to  us  a  being  slightly 
raised  above  this  humanity  with  which  he  has  hence- 
forth nothing  in  common.  The  other  effect  is  the  im- 
pression of  sadness  that  we  always  feel  in  beholding 
the  end  of  something  memorable. 

Sainte-Beuve  was  one  of  the  last  representatives  of 
an  epoch.  He  made  part  of  that  assemblage  of  states- 
men, orators,  poets,  artists,  who  appeared  in  France, 
as  if  by  enchantment,  after  the  fall  of  the  Empire.  He 
had  his  distinctive  place  in  the  front  rank.  Sainte- 
Beuve  was  not  less  decidedly  the  first  of  our  modern 
critics  than  Serre  and  Berryer  were  our  first  orators, 
Lamartine  and  Victor  Hugo  our  first  poets,  Ingres  and 
Delacroix  our  greatest  painters.  So,  in  departing  to- 
day, he  seems  to  carry  with  him  all  that  still  remained 
of  that  memorable  era,  and  to  mark  with  a  funeral 

3 


4  Saintc*3Beux>e. 

stone  the  end  of  a  period  gone  henceforth  into  the 
number  of  the  things  that  are  no  more. 

But  it  is  not  only  a  choir  of  immortal  artists  who 
have  passed  from  the  scene,  it  is  more  than  that;  it  is 
a  manner  of  conceiving  the  things  of  the  mind  that 
ceases,  a  literature  which  departs.  Sainte-Beuve  was  the 
last  of  the  litterateurs  in  the  former  sense  of  the  word. 
We  shall  never  again  see  writers  solely  occupied  with 
the  things  of  the  intellect,  and  writing  of  these  with 
grace  and  good  taste.  I  would  I  were  mistaken,  but 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  pen,  in  future,  is  to  serve  more 
especially  two  classes  of  men — the  money-makers  and 
the  amusers;  on  the  one  hand,  the  language  of  busi- 
ness; on  the  other,  that  of  violent  effects  and  puerile 
surprises. 

Sainte-Beuve  began  by  poesy;  and  he  clung  to  his 
claim  to  be  accepted  as  a  poet.  It  would,  in  fact,  be 
unjust  not  to  respect  such  claim.  I  have  never  opened 
his  volumes  of  verse  without  forgetting  myself  in  them, 
as  we  forget  ourselves  and  stray  in  autumn  through 
woodland  paths;  for  there  is,  in  those  volumes,  if  not 
poesy  itself,  at  least  so  keen  a  sentiment  and  so  sin- 
cere an  intention  of  poesy.  In  other  respects,  es- 
pecially in  his  experiments,  Sainte-Beuve  undoubtedly 
failed  in  his  verses.  He  attempted  to  give  us  a  new 
style.  After  enjoying  early  in  life  the  English  de- 
scriptive poets,  Cowper,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  he 
desired  to  make  us  all  seek  the  wholly  simple  and 
artless  poesy  of  things,  the  poesy  that  exhales  from 


Sainte*3Beuve,  s 

all  about  us  if  we  have  but  the  eye  to  see  and  the 
soul  to  feel  it.  A  walk,  the  reading  of  a  book,  a 
meeting  in  the  street,  seemed  to  him  enough  to  stir 
the  imagination.  He  dreamed  of  a  middle  region,  if 
1  may  venture  so  to  speak,  between  the  grand  poetic 
flights  and  the  kindly,  familiar  style  of  daily  life. 

Foreigners,  Schiller  and  Goethe,  for  instance,  in 
their  correspondence,  have  reproached  French  poesy 
with  being  nothing  more  than  eloquence;  now, 
Sainte-Beuve — as  perhaps  it  has  not  been  sufficiently 
noticed — was  altogether  a  stranger  to  this  oratorical 
bent  of  our  nation.  He  was  absolutely  without  that 
gift  of  rhetoric  which  is  always  the  foundation  of  our 
best  talent.  He  had  neither  eloquence,  nor  exaggera- 
tion, nor  rhythm.  When  he  spoke  in  public,  his 
speeches  were  hardly  more  than  newspaper  articles. 
When  he  wrote  in  prose,  he  dislocated  his  sentences 
as  he  pleased:  he  seemed  to  avoid  accepted  methods 
of  harmony  and  completeness.  And  the  same  in  his 
poetry:  breaks,  clauses  begun  in  one  verse  and  end- 
ing in  the  next,  nothing  musical;  it  seems,  if  our 
language  had  allowed  it,  that  he  would  rather  have 
written  in  blank  verse. 

We  have  Sainte-Beuve's  own  judgment  on  his 
poetic  work.  "I  have  risen  near  to  the  summit,"  I 
heard  him  say,  "but  I  have  never  gone  beyond  it, 
and  in  France  we  must  go  beyond."  Subtile  and 
true! 

The  poet,  moreover, — and  in  this  is  the  clearest  of 


6  Sainte*Beupe. 

his  results  in  that  line, — the  poet,  in  Sainte-Beuve, 
benefited  the  critic.  With  what  penetrating  taste  he 
judged  our  poet-authors!  With  what  inward  sym- 
pathy he  welcomed  the  verses  of  our  contemporaries, 
those  of  the  young  men  especially!  With  what  ex- 
perience and  what  authority  he  spoke  to  them  of  their 
art!  Sainte-Beuve  is  the  only  great  critic  of  poesy 
that  we  have  ever  had.  But  I  anticipate;  we  have 
not  yet  reached  the  critic. 

Sainte-Beuve  was,  all  his  life,  a  journalist;  he  chose 
to  be  that  only.  His  works,  excepting  two  or  three, 
are  all  collections  of  articles.  It  was  his  natural  and 
favourite  manner  of  working.  He  needed,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken,  the  stimulant  of  immediate  publication. 
We  must  therefore  not  expect  to  find  among  his 
papers  the  sketched-out  work  that  most  writers  have 
in  their  portfolios.  But  although,  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  his  life,  Sainte-Beuve  confined  him- 
self to  literary  articles  in  the  newspapers,  he  had  not 
always  done  so.  In  the  Globe,  at  the  beginning  of 
his  career,  and  later  in  the  National,  he  wrote  poli- 
tics— the  politics  of  a  young  man,  liberal,  ardent, 
aggressive,  which  are  now  easy  enough  to  bring  into 
contradiction  with  his  attitude  in  after  years.  And 
this  leads  me  to  speak  of  the  adherence  that  Sainte- 
Beuve  gave  to  the  Second  Empire;  the  most  illustri- 
ous, assuredly,  that  the  coup  d'  Etat  of  1851  obtained, 
and  all  the  more  signal  because  other  men  of  Letters, 
generally  and  honourably,  refused  to  give  their  ap- 


Satnte*Beuve.  7 

proval  to  that  deed  of  violence.  For  my  part,  I  do 
not  think  it  difficult  to  understand  the  choice  made 
by  Sainte-Beuve,  however  unfortunate  and  mistaken 
that  choice  may  have  been.  The  side  he  took  touched 
certain  profound  instincts  that  were  in  him.  His 
choice  was  not,  as  might  be  supposed,  the  eflFect  of 
the  temperament  of  a  man  of  Letters,  easily  alarmed 
by  public  agitations.  Nor  do  I  think  it  necessary  to 
put  his  passing  Caesarism  to  the  score  of  scepticism; 
to  that  distrust  of  human  nature  which  insinuates 
itself  so  readily  into  the  minds  of  those  who  have 
seen  much  of  men  and  have  gone  through  several 
revolutions. 

Liberalism  is  one  of  two  things:  either  a  sort  of 
religious  faith,  all  the  more  robust  because  it  is  a 
matter  of  youth,  the  result  of  an  illimitable  need  of 
action;  or  else  the  effect  of  a  reasoned  belief,  confi- 
dence in  the  immanent  power  of  ideas,  the  conviction 
that  truth  being,  in  the  long  run,  conformed  to  the 
nature  of  things,  needs  only  full  light  and  equal 
weapons  to  triumph.  Let  us  add  that  truth  is  not,  it 
makes  itself;  it  ceaselessly  frees  itself  from  the  strug- 
gle of  opposing  ideas;  so  that,  in  fact,  that  struggle  is 
the  essence  of  truth,  contradiction  is  its  life;  the  sole 
thing  it  asks  from  gods  and  men  is  the  tussle  of 
opinions — in  other  words,  simply  liberty.  Sainte- 
Beuve  evidently  did  not  share  either  the  blind  faith 
of  the  liberal  by  temperament,  or  the  reasoned  faith 
of  the  speculative  liberal.     Far  from  it;  he  was  afraid 


8  Sainte«3Beuve. 

of  liberty  on  account  of  certain  liberties  that  were 
dear  to  him.  He  did  not  think  that  in  French  society, 
constituted  as  it  is,  the  game  could  be  always  equal. 
For  instance,  he  asked  himself  whether,  with  a  pow- 
erful and  organised  clergy,  bourgeois  classes  lacking 
deep  culture,  and,  below,  a  populace  that  could  not 
read — whether,  with  those  conditions,  obscurantism 
was  not  too  strong  to  be  dislodged  by  the  Voltaires, 
or  even  by  the  Renans. 

But  that  which  dominated  Sainte-Beuve  in  this 
line  of  ideas,  and  made  him  less  fervent  for  liberty 
than  became  a  man  of  thought,  was,  assuredly,  one 
of  the  honourable  feelings  of  his  nature.  He  had,  in 
the  highest  degree,  humanity.  He  was  touched  by  the 
sufferings  of  the  multitude;  and  the  lessening  of  those 
sufferings  seemed  to  him  the  highest  duty  and  also 
the  greatest  interest  of  society.  Under  the  influence 
of  these  conceptions,  he  made  short  work  of  all  other 
considerations,  short  work  also  of  the  difficulties 
offered  by  the  nature  of  things.  We  see  here  how  it 
was  that  he  felt  attraction  for  such  thinkers  as  Proud- 
hon;  he  was  predisposed  to  believe  they  were  right 
because  they  promised  to  cure  evils  over  which  his 
compassionate  soul  quivered.  We  can  understand, 
also,  how  his  mind  was  able  to  accept  the  vision  of  a 
strong  power;  a  beneficent  dictatorship,  which,  de- 
riving its  rights  from  the  very  grandeur  of  its  task, 
would  guide  the  nation  strenuously  towards  its  new 
social  destinies.     I  have  always  smiled  at  the  miscon- 


5ainte*Beuve.  9 

ception,  when  I  have  seen  the  ultra-democratic  party 
affect  contempt  for  a  writer  who,  more  delicate  certainly 
and  less  assertive,  was  nevertheless  one  with  all  its 
generous  aspirations  and  its  ideas  on  the  duties  of 
authority.  Sainte-Beuve,  moreover,  as  there  is  no 
need  to  recall  here,  was  not  long  in  comprehending 
how  much  illusion  there  was  in  his  hopes.  He  saw 
that  the  saving  genius  had  not  appeared,  and  that  the 
safe  way  was  still  to  cling  to  the  liberty  of  all,  and  to 
all  the  liberties.  Toward  the  close  of  his  life  the  con- 
version,— or,  shall  I  say,  the  disenchantment.? — was 
about  complete. 

After  all,  what  remains,  and  will  ever  remain  of 
Sainte-Beuve,  is  literary  criticism.  In  that  lie  his 
originality,  his  claims,  his  incontestable  supremacy. 
In  that  line  he  stands  first,  or,  rather,  alone;  for  the 
effect  of  his  writings  has  been  to  cause  all  those  who 
preceded  him  to  be  forgotten.  To  what  a  distance  he 
has  brought  us  from  those  vain  theoretical  discussions 
and  sterile  debates  over  the  merits  and  defects  of 
authors!  I  know  not  if  some  new  critic  may  not 
come,  in  his  turn,  to  take  the  place  of  Sainte-Beuve, — 
that  is  the  law  of  things  human, — but  meanwhile, 
we  can  no  longer  make  our  judgment  on  works  of 
the  mind  under  any  other  form  than  that  of  which 
he  has  given  us  the  model. 

His  vocation  was  early  manifested.  He  tried  his 
hand  at  criticism  when  he  tried  it  in  poesy.  He  did 
it  in  the  Globe;  he  did  it  in  his  Joseph  Delorme;  he 


10  Sainte*3Beut>e. 

began,  as  early  as  1829,  in  the  Revue  de  Paris,  those 
"literary  portraits"  which  were  soon  after  continued 
in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  and  which  constitute 
his  first  manner.  But  here  we  touch  a  delicate  sub- 
ject, and  one  to  which  Sainte-Beuve  attached  much 
importance;  we  must  therefore  pause,  for  a  moment, 
over  his  early  life. 

He  was,  as  we  know,  to  have  been  a  physician.  In 
1826,  when  twenty-two  years  old,  he  lived  with  his 
mother  in  the  rue  de  Vaugirard,  and  followed  his 
medical  studies  as  an  externe  in  the  hospital  of  Saint- 
Louis.  He  had  a  little  room  for  study  in  the  rue  de 
Lancry ;  he  made  up  his  bed  himself,  and  was  so  alone 
in  those  days  of  his  youth,  he  used  to  say,  that  for 
three  months  at  a  time  no  one  entered  his  room.  His 
mother  clung  to  this  study  of  medicine  as  to  a  certain 
and  solid  thing;  he  himself  took  to  it  half-heartedly. 
He  was  not  satisfied  with  the  instruction  he  received. 
The  best  result  of  his  work  in  this  line  was  a  certain 
fund  of  practical  physiological  knowledge,  memories 
of  Bichat,  Lamarck,  and  Cabanis,  which  came  back  to 
him  after  his  mystical  phase,  and  remained,  thence- 
forth, as  a  sort  of  background  to  his  thoughts  of  life 
and  the  world. 

It  was  in  these  years  that  he  began  to  write  verses. 
In  1827  he  stayed  with  friends  in  England,  he  "bathed 
in  the  Thames,"  he  read  the  poets,  those  whose  style 
he  afterwards  attempted  to  introduce  into  our  language. 
He  was  employed,  about  this  time,  on  the  Globe,  for 


Satnte*3Beut>e.  n 

which  he  wrote  criticisms:  "  not  bad,"  he  said,  "  but 
dry."  Daunou,  however,  encouraged  him  to  work  for 
an  open  competition  on  the  poetic  literature  of  the 
sixteenth  century:  he  lent  him  books  and  the  young 
man  set  to  work.  Can  we  not  see  him,  at  that  early 
age  of  twenty-two,  already  studious  and  curious, 
interrogating  his  talent  and  his  destiny  ? 

Destiny  replied  to  him.  Meanwhile,  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Victor  Hugo.  The  second  volume  of 
Odes  et  Ballades  had  just  appeared  (1826);  Sainte- 
Beuve  was  to  write  an  article  on  it,  and  he  went  to 
see  the  poet,  who  lived  near  by,  in  fact,  within  two 
doors  of  the  critic.  The  latter  owned  to  the  poet  that 
he,  too,  made  verses;  he  showed  some,  received  good 
advice,  and  behold  the  two  young  men  bound  insepar- 
ably together,  and  Sainte-Beuve  renouncing  medicine 
for  Letters;  he  used  to  say  that  he  never  even  went  to 
the  hospital  to  get  his  instruments. 

Some  time  later,  Hugo  having  changed  his  lodgings, 
Sainte-Beuve  followed  him,  and  they  ended  by  living 
in  the  same  house.  This  intimacy  exercised  over  this 
part  of  our  friend's  life  an  influence  that  he  never 
sought  to  conceal.  He  gave  himself  up  to  poesy,  to 
friendship,  to  zealous  ardour  for  the  dawning  roman- 
tic creed.  The  years  from  1827  to  1830  rolled  by  in  a 
sort  of  enthusiastic  devotion,  of  which  the  preface  to 
Consolations  has  preserved  to  us  the  lyric  note  ;  it 
was  something  like  the  relations  of  master  and  dis- 
ciple at  the  period  of  the  Renaissance,  a  need  on  the 


12  Saintes=J6eut>e. 

part  of  the  latter  to  make  himself  humble  and  small, 
and  to  defer  in  all  things  to  the  pontiff  of  the  new 
faith.  This  preface  should  be  read  again  ;  and  all  the 
more  because  Sainte-Beuve,  if  I  am  not  mistaken, 
found  difficulty,  later,  in  forgiving  himself  for  it ;  re- 
covering from  that  fervour,  as  did  others,  he  was  angry 
with  himself  for  having  ceased  for  a  period  to  be- 
long to  himself ;  his  literary  and  moral  taste  suffered 
from  it. 

From  1830,  a  little  coolness  came  between  the 
friends.  To  this  politics  contributed.  Other  senti- 
ments had  taken  possession  of  Sainte-Beuve  and 
thrown  him  into  a  crisis  during  which,  agitated  and 
distressed,  he  tried  many  things,  took  up  the  most 
conflicting  ideas,  addressed  himself  to  the  new 
prophets,  frequented  Lamennais,  Lacordaire,  etc. 
From  this  crisis  came  Folupte  ("all  the  characters  are 
portraits,  very  exactly  painted  "  )  and  much  poetry, 
of  which  the  Pensees  d'Aoiit  contain  some,  and  the 
old  collections  contain  others,  but  which  are  for  the 
most  part  unpublished.  "There  are  thirty  or  so 
which  1  will  give  you  to  read,"  he  said,  "and  then 
you  can  burn  them." 

Thus,  from  1825  to  1830,  devotion  to  romanticism 
in  the  person  of  its  great  leader,  and,  from  1830  to 
1836,  a  period  of  passion  and  fever, — in  short,  a 
period  often  years,  to  which  Sainte-Beuve  often  made 
allusion,  saying  that  if  he  then  alienated  his  will,  it 
was  through  "the  effect  of  a  spell."     He  was  very 


Saittte*3Beuve,  13 

solicitous  to  make  it  understood  that  during  that 
period  he  was  not  yet  himself;  that  he  followed  ro- 
manticism farther  than  his  later  judgment  approved  ; 
in  a  word,  and  according  to  his  own  expression, 
criticism  was  not  yet  awakened  in  him.  It  was,  as  it 
were,  held  in  check  by  his  affections.  But  the  affec- 
tions themselves,  oh,  sorrow  !  had  their  disenchant- 
ment and  their  end.  Sainte-Beuve  left  Paris  for 
Lausanne.  This  was  the  close  of  the  poetic  and 
passionate  period  of  his  life.  At  Lausanne  he  planned 
and  sketched  out  Port  Royal,  the  first  fruits  of  his  new 
literary  activity. 

The  "History  of  Port-Royal"  occupies  a  very  im- 
portant place  in  the  life  of  Sainte-Beuve.  He  had  al- 
ready written  articles  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
and  elsewhere,  but  nothing  very  distinctive :  ' '  praises, 
complaisance,  foregone  conclusions."  The  subject 
that  he  now  chose  brought  him  for  the  first  time  to 
grapple  with  real  historical  study.  In  so  doing  he 
trained  himself  to  research,  to  exactitude.  He  devel- 
oped the  qualities  that  he  brought  to  this,  his  first 
important  work  —  psychological  intelligence,  infinite 
suppleness,  and  facility.  At  every  step  he  met  great 
literary  figures;  he  avoided  none;  on  the  contrary,  he 
knew  how  to  bring  them  powerfully  into  his  picture. 
Thus  it  was  that  Sainte-Beuve,  on  this  monastic  sub- 
ject, broke  himself  in,  as  it  were,  for  his  future  work; 
the  apprenticeship  was  thorough.  He  published  at 
the  same  time  many  of  his  Portraits,  contemporary 


14  Sainte*Beuve. 

and  other,  which  have  long  been  his  title  to  distinction 
as  a  critic,  and  had  then  already  made  a  place  apart 
for  him,  and  a  lofty  place,  before  the  Lundis  came  to 
make  him  another,  and  a  greater. 

The  Causeries  dii  Lundi  are,  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
say  it,  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  works  of  which 
literary  history  has  preserved  a  memory.  The  work 
is  as  amazing  for  its  extent  as  for  the  variety  of  its 
subjects,  as  vast  in  the  toil  that  gave  it  birth  as  for  the 
talent  that  is  shown  in  it.  All  subjects  are  there:  the 
ancients  and  the  contemporaries;  the  gravest  be- 
side gayest;  foreigners  as  well  as  Frenchmen;  prose 
and  poesy,  eloquence  and  history;  Bourdaloue  and 
d'Aguesseau  rubbing  shoulders  with  Musset  and 
Parny;  and  with  it  all,  endless  original  research,  notes 
made  on  documents,  curious  delvings  into  unexplored 
domains.  One  needs  to  have  known  Sainte-Beuve 
personally  to  comprehend  the  importance,  the  almost 
morbid  importance  he  attached  to  the  spelling  of  a 
name,  to  the  correctness  of  a  quotation  or  a  date. 
He  wished  to  see  everything  with  his  own  eyes,  to 
verify  everything.  He  had  truly  the  religion  of 
Letters. 

From  the  time  when  the  Liindis  began,  his  whole 
life  was  governed  by  the  conditions  of  the  task  he 
had  undertaken.  Those  marvellous  articles  came  from 
the  cell  of  a  Benedictine  monk.  Sainte-Beuve's  door 
was  closed,  except  on  Monday,  the  day  of  publication, 
which   was   made  a  day  of  rest  and  holiday.     The 


Sainte*Beupe.  15 

books  he  needed  for  his  work  were  collected  in  ad- 
vance in  the  public  libraries  by  devoted  friends.  The 
readings  from  them  made,  the  passages  noted,  he  made 
a  first  sketch  of  his  article;  then  he  "built  it,"  as  he 
used  to  say.  After  which,  he  corrected  every  part  of 
it,  and  began  to  write  it,  dictating  to  his  secretary, 
snatching  the  pen  himself  now  and  then,  interlin- 
ing, modifying,  bettering.  The  whole  conscience  of 
the  scholar  and  artist  was  on  the  qui  vive  during 
this  labour,  and  to  the  last  moment.  On  Friday 
the  article  was  finished:  Sainte-Beuve  drew  breath; 
he  went  to  read  his  work  to  Veron  (1  speak  of 
the  first  Lundis,  those  of  1849  ^^'^  the  following 
years),  whose  bourgeois  tact  he  valued ;  after  which 
he  stayed  to  dinner  with  Veron  and  a  few  friends. 
The  task  was  not  finished,  however;  after  the  printing 
came  the  correction  of  proofs,  of  which  two,  some- 
times three,  were  needed  to  satisfy  his  requirements. 
Saturday  and  Sunday  were  passed  thus,  and  then  the 
next  week  was  already  there  with  its  new  article  to 
sketch  out.  Such  is  the  cost  of  perfect  things,  of  last- 
ing things! 

Sainte-Beuve  continued  this  task  without  inter- 
ruption for  five  years ;  after  which,  the  occasion  arising, 
he  started  the  work  anew,  and  pursued  it  more  persist- 
ently than  ever.  Later,  there  was,  now  and  then,  a 
little  relaxing ;  as,  for  instance,  when  he  became 
Master  of  Conferences  at  the  EcoleNormale.  Towards 
the  last,  illness  stopped  the  work  at  times.      But  it  is 


1 6  Sainte*=3Beuve. 

mainly  none  the  less  true  that  he  pursued  it  for 
twenty  years,  and  laid  down  the  critic's  pen  only 
with  his  life. 

I  have  too  often,  on  too  many  occasions,  spoken 
of  Sainte-Beuve's  talent  to  feel  the  need  of  dwelling 
upon  it  to-day.  I  am  only  struck  with  one  thing  at 
this  moment  when  his  career  lies  there,  completed, 
before  us.  Progress,  in  him,  was  continual,  but  it 
was  slow  ;  as  it  is,  they  say,  in  the  development  of 
all  superior  life.  He  needed  time  to  reach  the  full 
possession  of  his  genius.  But  then,  how  all  things  in 
him  ever  tended  to  that  end !  What  perseverance  in 
effort!  What  incessant  progression!  What  distance 
from  his  first  style  to  that  which  he  attained  in  after 
years!  but  already,  in  the  first,  what  visible  struggle 
to  conquer  the  language,  to  chain  the  Proteus!  What 
sincerity  of  intention  !  What  need  to  satisfy  himself 
and  himself  above  all!  Sainte-Beuve  ^r^w  to  the  last; 
and  he  had  no  falling  back  ;  he  is  almost  the  only  one 
of  our  men  of  letters  who  sacrificed  absolutely  no- 
thing to  the  requirements  of  trade,  who  gave  way  to 
no  mannerism,  who  assumed  as  he  grew  older  neither 
trick  nor  pose.  To  the  last,  he  remained  faithful  to 
an  heroic  work,  to  an  artist's  conscience,  to  respect 
for  his  own  talent  :  Sainte-Beuve  is  the  model  for 
men  of  Letters. 

I  perceive  that  I  have  said  nothing  of  what  was, 
perhaps,  the  most  extraordinary  feature  of  his  works. 
Here  are  twenty-five  volumes  of  the  Lundis ;  add  to 


Sainte*Beux>e.  17 

those  the  Portraits,  the  Port-Royal,  the  Chateaubriand, 
and  we  have  forty  volumes  of  literary  criticism.  Weil, 
the  writer  never  repeated  himself.  He  always  had 
something  fresh  to  say,  and  he  always  said  it  in  a 
skilful  and  piquant  manner.  I  know  no  writer  who 
can  give  us  such  an  appetite  as  he.  We  open  him  at 
random,  we  read  him,  and  we  cannot  close  the  book. 
He  disappears  so  completely  behind  his  subject  ;  and 
when  he  does  show  himself  it  is  with  so  many  ideas, 
often  with  a  stroke  so  happy,  a  word  so  apposite,  so 
decisive  ! — a  Montaigne  turned  critic,  as  one  might 
say.  Searching,  sensible,  judicious,  without  a  shadow 
of  charlatanism,  returned  from  all  misleadings  ;  more 
sceptical  than  indifferent  ;  occasionally  with  a  biting 
sarcasm,  with  here  and  there  a  flower  of  poesy — such 
are  the  books  of  Sainte-Beuve. 

He  has  been  blamed  for  injustice.  I  am  convinced, 
on  the  contrary,  that  never  was  a  critic  more  equit- 
able. He  had  his  passions  no  doubt ;  but  passions 
are  the  man  himself,  the  living  expression  of  his 
moral  nature  ;  and  repugnances,  in  Sainte-Beuve,  were 
usually  only  the  revolt  of  his  taste  and  his  literary 
honesty  against  mediocrities,  pretensions,  and  affect- 
ations. There  are  authors  who  count  for  much  in 
our  literature  whom  he  never  enjoyed  ;  some  because 
they  were  not  artists  enough  to  suit  him,  others  be- 
cause he  understood  art  in  a  different  way  from  theirs, 
and  he  suffered  too  much  from  their  defects  to  enjoy 
their  beauties.     Apart   from  that,  he  was  possessed 

VOL.    I. — 2. 


1 8  Sainte*3Beuv>e. 

with  the  desire  to  be  just,  and  he  was  so,  by  the 
natural  effect  of  his  literary  conscience.  He  felt  that 
all  judgment  was  necessarily  provisional  and  partial  ; 
that  the  only  means  of  rendering  it  less  imperfect  was 
to  rectify  it,  fill  it  out,  complete  it,  and  for  that  purpose, 
to  return  to  it,  once,  twice,  constantly.  He  was  con- 
vinced, in  general,  that  "  all  saying  has  its  counter- 
saying"  ;  that  men,  in  particular,  have  a  right  side 
and  a  wrong  side,  he  felt  himself  obliged  to  show 
the  one  after  showing  the  other.  Hence  these 
several  portraits  of  the  same  personage,  which  he 
took  up  anew,  changing  the  tone  and  the  point  of 
view  ;  hence  the  retouches,  the  notes,  the  correction 
so  near  to  the  assertion.  Sainte-Beuve,  contrary  to 
what  those  who  have  not  followed  him  closely  sup- 
pose, was  one  of  the  critics  whose  judgments  have 
been  least  influenced  by  considerations  outside  of 
literature  itself. 

And  now  we  must  take  leave  of  him,  of  that  lu- 
cid intellect,  of  that  wonderful  writer,  that  charming 
talker,  that  indulgent  friend  ;  we  must  bid  him  again 
the  last  farewell  with  which  we  bowed  before  him 
yesterday,  as  we  saw  the  grave  close  over  him!' 
Happy  shall  we  be  if  the  melancholy  natural  fore- 
bodings at  such  a  moment  are  not  realised !  Happy 
if  the  death  of  a  man  who  has  held  so  high  a  place  in 
our  literature  is  not  at  the  same  time  the  end  of  a 
literary  era  ;  if  delicacy  and  taste,  deprived  of  their 

'  Written  in  October,  1869,  at  the  time  of  Sainte-Beuve's  death. 


Sainte^Beuve.  19 

last  representative,  do  not  vanish  with  him  ;  if  the 
royalty  of  letters  is  not  fated  to  pass  away  like  the 
other  royalties,  and  give  place  to  general  mediocrity 
and  violent  methods.  I  have  often  had  the  impres- 
sion that  Sainte-Beuve,  towards  the  end,  felt  himself 
homeless  in  the  midst  of  the  new  tendencies  ;  it  is  in- 
evitable, perhaps,  that  when  we  lose  a  man  like  him, 
we  should  imagine  that  all  is  ended,  whereas  it  may 
be  only  that  all  is  being  transformed. 


^be  2)ucbc60e  bu  Obninc. 


21 


THE  DUCHESSE  DU  MAINE  was  a  species  of 
fairy,  and  one  of  the  most  singular:  she  de- 
serves to  be  studied,  she  and  her  princely  ex- 
istence, in  her  little  Court  of  Sceaux,  where  she  comes 
before  us  as  one  of  the  extreme  and  most  fantastic 
productions  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV,  of  the  mon- 
archical regime  carried  to  excess. 

Born  in  1676,  the  DuchesseDu  Maine  died  in  1753, 
not  quite  one  hundred  years  ago.  In  those  hundred 
years  a  great  revolution  has  taken  place  in  the  order 
and  governance  of  society,  in  the  whole  body  of  pub- 
lic manners  and  morals,  so  that  the  existence  and  life 
led  by  this  fantastic  little  queen  seems  to  us  like  an 
Arabian  Night's  tale,  and  we  ask  ourselves  seriously: 
' '  Was  it  ever  possible  ?  "  La  Bruyere  foresaw  and  fore- 
told something  of  this  fundamental  change  when  he 
said:  "While  the  grandees  of  the  land  neglect  all 
knowledge  of — 1  will  not  say  the  interests  of  princes 
and  of  public  affairs  only,  but  of  their  own  affairs  ; 
while  they  ignore  domestic  economy  and  science  of 
the  father  of  the  home,  and  boast  of  that  ignorance, 
citizens  are  instructing  themselves  in  and  out  of  the 

23 


24  Ube  Ducbesse  t)u  /IDatne, 

kingdom,  becoming  shrewd  and  politic,  learning  the 
strength  and  the  weakness  of  all  things  in  the  State, 
they  are  thinking  of  bettering  their  position,  they  rise, 
they  become  powerful,  they  relieve  the  Prince  of  a 
part  of  his  public  cares.  The  grandees  who  disdained 
them  now  revere  them,  and  think  themselves  fortun- 
ate to  become  their  sons-in-law."  This  revolution, 
which  La  Bruyere  thus  foretold  under  a  form  of  com- 
promise and  friendly  agreement,  was  not,  as  we  all 
know,  so  peaceable.  La  Bruyere,  out  of  courtesy, 
said  of  the  grandees  what  he  would  not  have  ventured 
to  say  of  princes.  The  newcomers  on  the  social  stage 
have  not  always  been  as  conciliating  as  the  parvenus 
of  La  Bruyere's  time.  The  new  state  of  things  did 
not  end  in  a  marriage,  and,  from  '89  to  1850,  the 
equilibrium  between  what  remains  of  the  essence  of 
the  old  society  and  the  increasing  claims  of  the  new 
society  is  still  being  sought. 

The  Duchesse  du  Maine,  with  all  her  wit  and  clever- 
ness, had  no  suspicion  of  all  this,  and  never  put  such 
questions  before  her  mind;  she  believed  in  her  birth- 
rights, in  her  prerogatives  of  demigod,  just  as  firmly  as 
she  believed  in  Descartes's  system  and  her  Catechism. 

Louise  Benedicte  de  Bourbon  was  a  granddaughter 
of  the  Great  Conde.  Her  brother,  M.  le  Due,  had  La 
Bruyere  for  his  tutor,  and  she  may,  in  some  respects, 
have  profited  thereby.  In  excellence  of  language,  in 
wit,  in  eagerness  for  knowledge,  she  early  showed 
that  she  had,  like  her  brother,  sparks  of  the  intellect 


DUCHESSE   DU  MAINE. 
From  a  copper  engraving. 


Ube  Bucbesse  ^u  /iDaine.  25 

of  her  grandfather.  But  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the 
soul  of  a  hero,  when  it  is  shared  and  broken  up  among 
his  descendants,  sometimes  produces  very  singular 
beings,  and  even  strange,  abnormal  ones.  Everything 
is  on  a  great  scale  in  great  souls,  vices  as  well  as  vir- 
tues. Defects  which,  in  the  hero,  were  balanced  and 
held  in  check  by  lofty  qualities,  reveal  themselves  all 
of  a  sudden  in  his  descendants,  and  seem  excessive. 
The  Great  Conde,  at  the  bottom  of  his  soul,  had  none 
of  that  natural  kindness  —  honte — for  which  Bossuet 
lauded  him;  but  his  great  mind  and  his  valiant  heart 
covered  a  multitude  of  things.  He  was  not  to  be  op- 
posed at  certain  times;  violent  and  despotic  in  tem- 
per, he  was  easily  irritated  by  contradiction,  even 
when  the  matter  concerned  only  topics  of  the  mind. 
Boileau  perceived  this  one  day  when  he  differed  from 
him  in  some  discussion:  "In  future,"  he  said,  "I 
shall  always  be  of  the  same  opinion  as  M.  le  Prince, 
especially  when  he  is  wrong." 

In  general,  the  descendants  of  the  Great  Conde 
(history  may  say  it  to-day,  for  the  race  is  extinct) 
were  not  kind.  Brutality,  carried  to  ferocity,  char- 
acterised the  one  called  M.  le  Due  (the  grandson), 
and  also  that  other  M.  le  Due,  the  first  prime-minis- 
ter of  the  Regency;  it  was  startling  in  the  Comte  de 
Charolais.  Violence,  impossibility  of  bearing  con- 
tradiction, were  vehement,  even  frantic  traits  in  all 
of  them.  But  the  mind  of  the  great  ancestor  held  its 
own  with  distinction,  and  was  distributed  as  if  in 


26  Ube  H)ucbesse  C)u  /IDatne. 

brilliant  portions  among  his  posterity.  The  Du- 
chesse  du  Maine  was  one  of  those  who  were  best 
supplied  with  it.  It  is  noticeable  that  already,  in  the 
grandchildren,  the  race  was  becoming  physically  im- 
poverished; their  forms  showed  it.  The  Duchesse 
du  Maine,  as  well  her  sisters,  was  almost  a  dwarf; 
she  was  the  tallest  of  the  family,  but  did  not  look 
to  be  more  than  ten  years  old.  When  the  Due  du 
Maine  married  her,  having  to  choose  among  the 
daughters  of  M.  le  Prince,  he  chose  this  one  because 
she  was,  perhaps,  a  fraction  taller  than  her  elder  sis- 
ters. They  were  never  called,  in  familiar  talk,  the 
"princesses  of  the  blood"  but  the  "dolls  of  the 
blood." 

The  Due  du  Maine,  who,  in  1692,  at  twenty-two 
years  of  age,  married  this  granddaughter  of  the 
Great  Conde,  aged  sixteen,  was  the  eldest  of  the  bas- 
tards of  Louis  XIV  and  Mme.  de  Montespan.  The 
little  prince,  tenderly  brought  up  by  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon,  who  was  a  true  mother  to  him,  had  been 
formed  and  trained  on  the  ideals  of  the  foundress  of 
Saint-Cyr.  He  had  intelligence,  an  excellent  gift  of 
language,  gentleness  and  charm  in  private  life,  and 
the  habit  of  discretion  and  submission;  in  a  word, 
he  was  one  of  those  youths  who  are  early  perfected, 
who  never  emancipate  themselves,  and  who  never 
altogether  become  men.  He  was  club-footed,  a  con- 
stitutional blemish  which  increased  his  natural  shy- 
ness  in   society.      Well-educated,    but   without   real 


Ube  Ducbesse  Du  /IDafne.  27 

intelligence,  he  was  destined  never,  in  the  region  of 
ideas,  to  go  beyond  the  narrow  horizon  by  which  he 
had  been  hemmed  in  from  infancy.  The  duchess, 
eager,  bold,  imperious,  and  fantastic,  was  destined 
never  to  go  beyond  that  horizon  herself;  and  all  her 
audacity,  all  her  flights  of  fantasy,  were  confined 
within  the  artificial  and  magical  sphere  in  which  she 
kept  herself  excited,  without  a  thought  beyond  it. 

On  the  day  when  Louis  XIV,  yielding  to  his  son's 
desire,  gave  him  permission  to  marry,  he  could  not 
restrain  the  remark,  full  of  the  common  sense  of  his 
royal  conviction:  ''Such  persons  ought  never  to 
marry."  He  foresaw  the  confusion  and  the  conflicts 
which  this  equivocal  race  of  "  legitimatised  bas- 
tards "  might  bring  into  the  monarchical  system, 
which  was  then  the  whole  constitution  of  the  State. 
He  yielded,  however,  and  toward  the  last  he  did  his 
best  to  increase  that  confusion  by  the  favours  and 
prerogatives  which  he  never  ceased  to  heap  upon 
these  adulterous  and  parasitic  offspring. 

No  sooner  was  she  married,  than  the  little  duchess 
took  her  timid  husband  in  hand,  and  subjected  him 
in  all  things  to  her  will.  She  dreamed  of  future 
glory,  of  political  grandeur  and  power;  meanwhile 
she  chose  to  live  as  she  pleased,  and  in  as  much 
sovereign  state  as  she  could  compass;  doing  as  little 
as  possible  for  others,  gratifying  all  her  caprices,  and 
setting  up  a  Court  of  her  own  where  no  rival  star 
could  shine.     This  dream  of  her  imagination  was  not 


28  Zbc  Bucbesse  &u  /lDaine» 

fully  realised  until  the  Due  du  Maine  purchased  the 
estate  of  Sceaux  from  the  heirs  of  M.  de  Seignelay, 
at  a  cost  of  900,000  livres.  There  she  made  her 
Chantilly,  her  Marly,  her  Versailles  in  miniature 
(1700). 

Among  the  tutors  of  the  Due  du  Maine  there  had 
been  a  M.  de  Malezieu,  a  well-educated  man,  know- 
ing mathematics,  literature,  Greek  and  Latin,  im- 
provising verses,  planning  theatricals,  understanding 
something  of  business,  and  "combining  in  his  servile 
position,"  says  Lemontey,  "the  advantages  of  a  uni- 
versal mediocrity,"  This  M.  de  Malezieu,  who  be- 
came the  indispensable  personage  of  the  Court  of  the 
duchess,  its  oracle  in  all  matters,  and  of  whom  they 
said  at  Sceaux,  as,  in  the  olden  time,  of  Pythagoras, 
"The  Master  says  it,"  must  certainly  have  had  more 
than  one  good  quality,  but  it  is  difficult  to-day  to  form 
a  just  idea  of  his  merits.  Member  of  two  Academies, 
that  of  the  Sciences  and  also  of  the  French  Academy, 
he  was  extolled  by  Fontenelle,  who,  however,  did  not 
overdo  the  matter,  and  shows  him  to  us,  with  his 
"robust  and  fiery  temperament,"  sufficing  for  all 
petty  employments.  Voltaire,  more  critical,  speaks  of 
him  as  a  man  in  whom  great  erudition  had  not  extin- 
guished genius  :  "He  sometimes  took  up  before  your 
Serene  Highness"  (Mme.  du  Maine)  "a  Sophocles,  a 
Euripides,  and  translated  on  the  spot  into  French  one 
of  their  tragedies.  The  admiration,  the  enthusiasm 
that  possessed  him,  inspired  him  with  words  and  ex- 


XTbe  H)ucbe55e  Du  /IDatne.  29 

pressions  which  rendered  well  the  manly  and  har- 
monious vigour  of  the  Greek  verse,  as  much  as  it  was 
possible  to  approach  it  in  the  prose  of  a  language  lately 
issued  from  barbarism.  .  .  .  Nevertheless,  M.  de 
Malezieu,  by  efforts  that  called  forth  immediate  en- 
thusiasm, and  by  vehement  recitation,  seemed  to  make 
up  for  the  poverty  of  our  language,  and  to  put  into 
his  declamation  the  very  soul  of  the  great  men  of 
Athens." 

That  is  a  eulogy  which  ought  to  give  a  high  idea 
of  the  man ;  but  we  must  not  forget  that  Voltaire  ex- 
presses himself  thus  in  a  Dedicatory  Letter.  The 
Memoirs  of  Mme.  de  Staal  (de  Launay)  show  us  M.  de 
Malezieu  in  a  less  favourable  light,  as  ceremonious, 
demonstrative,  and  dull,  without  much  discernment 
when  discernment  was  not  useful  to  him,  and  with  a 
mind  that  needed  the  help  of  a  little  heart.  M.  de 
Malezieu  was,  to  all  appearance,  one  of  those  men 
who  derive  activity  from  a  robust  temperament,  com- 
bining shrewdness  with  energy;  and  who,  having  an 
extensive  and  solid  fund  of  early  knowledge  which 
they  never  increase,  devote  themselves  solely  to  put- 
ting that  knowledge  to  use  in  society,  and  to  getting 
a  profit  out  of  it  from  the  great.  He  was  a  man  of 
intelligence  and  education,  who  could  appear  a  genius 
only  to  a  small  coterie.  That  coterie  he  found  at 
Sceaux,  and,  by  dint  of  constant  activity  and  inven- 
tion, he  was  able  to  fill  it,  for  more  than  twenty-five 
years,  with   the   idea  of   his    great  attainments  and 


30  Zbc  5)ucbesse  bw  /IDaine, 

sublimity.     At  three  leagues  from  Paris  people  called 
him,  without  laughing,  the  great  Malezieu! 

M.  de  Malezieu  had  been  one  of  the  principal  causes 
of  the  purchase  of  Sceaux.  Already  rich  through  the 
bounty  of  the  Court,  he  owned  a  pretty  country-house 
at  Chatenay,  where  he  received  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine,  who  honoured  him  with  a  visit  in  the  summer 
of  1699,  and  to  whom  he  gave  a  gallant  hospitality. 
She  stayed  there,  being  pregnant,  during  the  whole 
sojourn  of  the  Court  at  Fontainebleau.  Games, 
fetes,  fireworks  in  her  honour,  were  continual,  and 
all  was  managed  with  a  certain  air  of  innocence,  as 
of  the  Golden  Age.  The  populace  of  the  neighbour- 
hood took  part  in  these  pleasures  by  songs  and 
dances  ;  the  country  was  then  tasting  the  first  sweets 
of  the  Peace  of  Ryswick.  The  duchess  then  and 
there  made  her  debut  into  that  life  of  fairyland  and 
mythology  in  which  she  took  such  delight  that  soon 
she  would  have  no  other  ;  and  then  it  was  that  the  idea 
came  into  her  head  to  take  possession  of  the  whole 
valley.  The  description  of  this  first  visit  given  by  the 
Abbe  Genest,  a  colleague  of  Malezieu,  and  addressed 
to  Mile.  deScudery,  is  quite  piquant,  and  shows  us  the 
origin  of  that  long  play  at  pastorals  which  soon  after 
became  the  very  existence  of  the  duchess.  Romantic 
"surprises"  attended  her  every  step;  innocent 
amusements  at  all  hours  :  they  played  at  nymphs  and 
shepherdesses  ;  they  prepared  for  future  prodigality 
by  playing  at  economy.     "  M.  le  Due  du  Maine,"  says 


the  narrative,  "complained  when  he  left  off  playing 
that  he  had  lost  ten  livres;  the  princesses  boasted  of 
their  luck  in  having  won  nearly  as  much."  In  these 
fetes,  and  in  others  that  followed  in  the  same  place  in 
succeeding  years,  we  see  M.  de  Malezieu  doing  the 
honours  charmingly,  and  giving  life  as  universal 
manager  to  the  whole  of  that  little  sphere.  No  wonder 
that  he  was  thought  worthy  of  being  in  himself  the 
Moliere,  the  Descartes,  the  Pythagoras,  of  that  kingdom 
of  Lilliput! 

The  Duchesse  du  Maine,  said  Fontenelle,  insisted 
that  even  in  amusements  there  should  be  an  idea,  an 
invention,  and  that  "joy  should  have  wit."  When 
we  read  to-day  the  narrative  of  these  fetes  in  the 
collection  entitled  "The  Diversions  at  Sceaux,"  we 
recognise,  in  the  midst  of  the  insipidity,  that  M.  de 
Malezieu  did  supply  the  mental  quality  that  the  fairy 
demanded. 

Soon  the  whole  of  the  pretty  valley  of  Sceaux  be- 
came the  park  of  the  duchess,  her  pastoral  kingdom, 
her  vale  of  Tempe.  She  never  appeared  that  the 
"  Sylvain  of  Chatenay,"  and  the  "  Nymph  of  Aulnay," 
did  not  come  to  pay  homage  in  person  ;  there  was 
not  a  spot,  even  as  far  as  Plessis-Piquet,  without  its 
rural  divinity.  The  Abbe  Genest  had  selected  his 
hermitage,  whence  he  came  to  offer  his  devotions  to 
"Our  Lady  of  Sceaux." 

But,  who  was  this  Abbe  Genest  ?  Oh  !  something 
very  singular  and   very  amusing,  I  assure  you;    the 


32  Ube  Bucbesse  ^u  /IDaine. 

least  solemn  of  the  French  academicians  (for  he  be- 
longed to  the  Forty),  and  the  most  difficult  to  eulo- 
gise at  their  public  session.  D'Olivet  supplemented 
the  official  eulogy  by  a  private  letter.  The  Abbe 
Genest  was,  like  Socrates,  the  son  of  a  midwife;  he 
began  life  in  business  as  a  peddler,  then  he  was  a  pris- 
oner, then  copyist,  tutor,  horse-jockey,  secretary  to 
the  Due  de  Nevers  ;  witty  and  well-informed  through 
it  all,  and  making  verses  with  ease  and  natural  gaiety. 
He  received  first  the  second  prize  and  then  the  first 
prize  for  poesy  in  1671  and  1673  ;  that  made  him 
known.  He  curried  favour  with  Pellisson,  and, 
through  him,  with  the  Dauphin's  tutors,  Bossuet  and 
others.  He  took  part  in  the  conference  on  physics  of 
the  famous  Rohault,  and,  through  some  queer  notion, 
he  set  to  work  at  putting  Descartes's  philosophy  into 
verse.  Finally  he  came  to  know  M.  de  Malezieu, 
who  enjoyed  him,  utilised  him,  and  made  him  his 
confederate  in  the  games  and  poetical  diversions  of 
society.  The  Abbe  Genest  was  to  princes  what  they 
have  liked  in  all  ages  (even  our  own),  a  mixture  of 
poet  and  buffoon.  He  was  laughed  at,  and  gave 
occasion  for  it  ;  he  had  a  very  remarkable  disfigure- 
ment, which  did  no  harm  to  his  fortunes  :  his  nose 
was  immense,  so  immense  that  apparently  we  can 
form  no  idea  of  it.  Many  a  time  the  Due  de  Bour- 
gogne  and  the  Due  du  Maine,  when  schoolboys,  joked 
about  their  tutor's  nose.  Louis  XIV  himself  gave 
way  once,  and  laughed  a  natural  laugh  at  one  of  the 


Zbc  Ducbesse  M  iflDaine*  33 

pranks  played  upon  the  abbe  with  that  stupendous 
nose.  They  even  went  so  far  as  to  find  an  anagram 
in  his  name,  Charles  Genest — Eh,  c'est  large  ne:{_.  I 
skip,  out  of  propriety,  many  jests  relating  to  a  totally 
different  matter — how  shall  1  mention  it  ? — relating  to 
the  too  habitual  and  very  incomplete  manner  in  which 
the  Abbe  Genest,  in  his  absent-minded  moments,  was 
accustomed  to  fasten  the  garment  that  the  English 
never  name.  Thanks  to  his  merits  so  real  and  diverse, 
the  facetious  abbe  was  in  demand  at  Chatenay,  Sceaux, 
and  Saint-Maur,  for  all  the  rural  and  bucolic  fetes  : 

Among  the  sylvan  gods,  forget  not 
Him  who  weareth  bands  and  black  coat 

With  that  coat  and  with  that  nose, 
That  nose  that  measures  two  feet  long, 
He  surely  must  be  pedagogue  of  Fauns. 

But  this  is  nonsense.  Let  us  resume  our  subject 
without  further  frivolity.  The  Duchesse  du  Maine 
studied  the  philosophy  of  Descartes  with  M.  de  Male- 
zieu  ;  with  him  and  by  him  she  read  Virgil,  Terence, 
Sophocles,  Euripides  ;  and  before  long  she  was  able 
to  read  some  of  those  authors,  the  Latins  at  least, 
in  the  original.  Moreover,  she  studied  astronomy, 
always  with  that  font  of  universal  knowledge,  M.  de 
Malezieu,  who  knew  more  than  was  needed  to  explain 
"The  Plurality  of  Worlds"  by  Fontenelle.  She 
applied  her  eyes  to  the  telescope,  and  also  to  the  micro- 
scope ;  in  short,  she  studied  everything,  by  fits  and 

VOL.  1. — 3. 


34  ^be  Ducbesse  &u  ^aine. 

starts,  out  of  passion  or  caprice,  but  without  becom- 
ing one  whit  more  enlightened  in  general.  Through 
it  all  she  played  shepherdess  and  pastorals  by  day 
and  by  night  ;  supplied  ideas  to  be  made  into  madri- 
gals by  her  two  scribblers,  the  eternal  Malezieu  and 
the  Abbe  Genest  ;  invited  and  gathered  about  her  a 
crowd  of  elect,  set  them  to  work,  wearied  them  to 
extinction,  allowed  no  delay  in  carrying  out  her  de- 
sires, and  kept  herself  in  movement  with  impish 
energy,  for  fear  of  having  to  reflect,  or  of  being  bored 
for  a  single  instant.  As  for  sleep  in  the  midst  of 
these  vigils  and  distractions,  there  was  no  question  of 
it ;  the  duchess  was  persuaded  that  it  was  necessary 
only  for  common  mortals. 

From  the  literary  point  of  view,  which,  whether 
from  far  or  near,  must  be  ours,  the  mischief  of  this 
rush  of  tumultuous  life  was  that  of  being  incompati- 
ble with  good  taste.  Good  taste  examines,  discerns  ; 
it  has  its  periods  of  repose  ;  it  selects.  In  this  case, 
natural  intelligence  did  all,  but  discerned  nothing, 
selected  nothing  ;  in  her  theatricals  the  duchess  played 
indiscriminately  "Athalie,"  "Iphigenia  in  Tauris " 
(faithfully  translated  from  Euripides),  or  Azaneth, 
wife  of  Joseph,  in  the  tragedy  of  "Joseph"  written 
by  the  Abbe  Genest. 

What  did  it  signify  to  her,  provided  she  kept  up  a 
constant  turmoil,  gave  way  to  all  her  emotions,  and 
reigned  supreme  ?  People  compared  her  to  the  great 
queens  who  have  loved  knowledge, — to  Queen  Chris- 


Ubc  Bucbesse  ^u  /IDatne.  35 

tina,  to  Elizabeth,  Princess  Palatine,  the  friend  of 
Descartes,  and  gave  her  the  pre-eminence.  President 
de  Mesmes  (premier-president  of  the  Parliament)  ad- 
dressed to  her  with  a  new-year's  gift,  verses  which 
he  had  caused  to  be  written  in  the  chivalric  and  Marotic 
style  (the  fashion  of  the  moment),  in  which  he  styled 
himself  "The  very  powerful  Emperor  of  Hindustan," 
writing  to  the  "more  than  perfect  Princess  Ludovisa, 
Empress  of  Sceaux."  On  both  sides  the  masquerade 
was  perfect.  Even  when  she  looked  into  her  mirror 
the  duchess  thought  herself  beautiful;  though  she 
could  not  deny  that  she  was  short.  At  the  time  of 
her  marriage  an  emblem  and  a  motto  had  been  devised 
for  her  :  a  honey-bee,  with  these  words  from  Tasso  : 
Piccola  si,  ma  fa  pur  gravi  le  ferite — Small  she  is, 
but  she  gives  cruel  wounds.  This  gave  rise,  in  the 
early  days  of  Sceaux,  to  the  formation  of  a  society  of 
the  persons  who  most  often  had  the  honour  of  being 
invited  there,  under  the  name  of  the  Order  of  the 
Honey-bee.  Rules  and  regulations  were  drawn  up, 
statutes  were  framed,  a  medal  was  struck  for  the 
occasion  which  those  of  the  Order  were  to  wear 
suspended  to  a  lemon-coloured  ribbon,  whenever 
they  went  to  Sceaux.  This  mark  of  distinction  was 
much  coveted.  Thirty-nine  persons  were  appointed 
and  took  the  required  oath,  swearing  "by  Mount 
Hymettus."  On  this  occasion  they  played  at  being 
Greek. 

But  now,   Louis  XIV's  last  war,  the  War  of  the 


36  Ube  Ducbesse  Du  /iDaine. 

Spanish  Succession,  was  lighted,  and  all  Europe  was 
in  a  blaze;  fortune  was  beginning  to  turn  against 
France;  the  people  were  exhausted  by  taxes  and 
bloodshed;  the  Due  du  Maine  failed  to  distinguish 
himself  by  valour  on  the  battlefield  ;  but  at  Sceaux 
the  duchess,  radiant  with  hope  and  pride,  played  her 
plays  and  continued  to  amuse  herself.  "  She  swam," 
says  Saint-Simon,  "  in  the  joy  of  her  future  grandeur." 
The  full  glory,  the  splendour  of  what  were  called  the 
"Grand  Nights  of  Sceaux,"  belong  to  these  very 
years  of  disaster.  The  scandal  of  such  fetes  and 
ruinous  amusements  became  all  the  greater,  or  at 
least  more  notorious,  when  the  misfortunes  of  the 
royal  family  were  added  to  those  of  France.  But  the 
death  of  the  chief  direct  heirs  brought  the  Due  du 
Maine  nearer  to  power,  and  even  to  the  throne; 
every  rung  the  less  in  the  ladder  of  legitimate  succes- 
sion was  one  step  higher  on  the  ladder  of  his  fortune. 
We  know  now  that  Louis  XlV's  weakness,  beset  by 
that  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  the  foster-mother  more 
than  mother  of  the  Due  du  Maine,  would  in  the  end 
equalise  in  all  things  the  bastards  with  the  legitimate 
princes  of  the  blood,  and  declare  them,  definitively, 
capable  of  succeeding  to  the  throne.  His  last  will, 
had  it  been  followed,  would  have  given  to  the  Due  du 
Maine  the  highest  influence  in  the  future  Regency. 

Curious  readers  can  look  into  the  Collection  called 
that  of  Maurepas  (Bibliotheque  Nationale),  for  the  coup- 
lets and  savage  squibs  with  which  the  Due  and  Du- 


XTbe  Ducbesse  M  /iDaine.  37 

chesse  du  Maine  were  assailed  on  the  occasion  of  these 
odious  favours ;  they  are  not  very  witty,  and,  in  general, 
are  too  indecent  to  be  quoted  here.  Many  are  the  scur- 
rilous comments  on  the  duchess,  whose  own  poets 
always  spoke  of  her  as  "the  modern  Penelope."  I 
shall  only  say  two  words  on  that  delicate  subject.  M. 
le  Due  (de  Bourbon),  own  brother  of  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine,  had,  at  one  time,  a  great  fancy  for  her;  such 
fancies  were  not  rare  in  the  family  of  the  Condes. 
The  brother  and  sister  exchanged,  from  Saint-Maur  to 
Sceaux,  gallant  sentiments,  which  the  duchess  made 
Malezieu  and  Genest  put  into  rhyme,  while  Chaulieu 
and  La  Fare  did  the  same  for  M.  le  Due.  At  last, 
however,  the  couple  quarrelled,  but  much  gossip  and 
many  songs  had  already  been  spread  abroad. 

After  these  first  attacks  on  the  score  of  M.  le  Due, 
something  was  said,  but  rather  mildly,  about  President 
de  Mesmes,  whom  the  duchess  desired  to  attach  to 
herself  in  order  that  she  might  rule  the  Parliament 
through  him.  But  Cardinal  de  Polignae  seems  to 
have  been  the  favourite  most  in  evidence,  and  some 
have  gone  so  far  as  to  quote  parts  of  letters  that  would 
seem  to  be  decisive  proof.  That  cardinal,  so  agreeable 
in  person  and  so  much  of  a  wit,  appears  to  have  been 
made  expressly  for  the  little  Court  a  la  Rambouillet. 
He  was  always  busy  with  his  great  poem  of  "Anti- 
Luerece,"  in  which  he  maintained  in  Latin  verse  the 
soundest  principles  of  theology  and  morality.  He  read 
it,  he  explained  it  to  the  duchess,  and  M.  du  Maine 


38  Zbc  Ducbesse  t>w  flDalne. 

took  pleasure  in  translating  the  songs.  One  day  when 
the  prince  brought  a  song  he  had  translated  to  his  wife, 
she  said  impatiently:  "  You  will  wake  up  some  fine 
morning  and  find  yourself  in  the  French  Academy, 
and  M.  d'Orleans  Regent  of  the  kingdom." 

Ambition  brooded  in  her,  beneath  this  life  of  games 
and  comedies.  In  that  pigmy  body,  in  that  epitome  of 
the  Great  Conde,  lay  sparks  of  the  same  civic  mad- 
ness. Of  humane  sentiment  or  of  patriotism  in  these 
superior  beings,  who  think  themselves  of  the  lineage  of 
Jupiter,  there  is  no  question  whatever;  the  nation  and 
the  world  were  made  for  them ;  they  believe  this  sin- 
cerely, and  they  act  loftily  in  consequence.  On  the 
eve  of  the  Regency  (1714),  Mme.  du  Maine  made  a 
declaration  to  two  dukes  and  peers,  whom  she  had 
summoned  to  Sceaux  to  talk  over  eventualities — as  we 
should  say  and  as  she  did  not  say,  for  if  she  thought 
wrong  she  at  least  spoke  better  than  we  do.  She  wanted 
to  secure  for  herself  a  party  in  the  Parliament,  and 
obtain  support  there  in  the  event  of  any  quibbles  being 
raised  against  the  rights  which  she  believed  the  Due 
du  Maine  had  now  acquired  under  the  king's  will. 
Seeing  that  those  she  addressed  were  reserved  and  on 
their  guard,  she  flew  into  a  passion  (as  she  always 
did  when  she  encountered  the  slightest  opposition), 
and  told  them  that  "  when  once  the  power  of  succeed- 
ing to  the  throne  was  obtained,  rather  than  let  it  be 
torn  from  them,  they  would,  if  need  be,  throw  the 
kingdom   into   a  blaze  from    its   centre   to   its  four 


Ube  Bucbesse  M  /iDafne.  39 

corners."  There  is  the  Great  Conde  himself !  Louis 
XIV  dead  and  his  will  broken,  furious  with  anger, 
she  did  not  rest  till  she  had  tried  to  put  those  evil 
words  into  execution. 

All  this  interrupted  somewhat  the  festivities  of 
Sceaux;  and  there  are  two  periods,  two  epochs,  in  that 
long,  mythological  life  of  pleasure,  or,  as  I  call  it,  that 
life  hemmed  between  two  hedges:  the  first  epoch, 
that  of  hopes,  of  proud  intoxication,  of  ambition  con- 
cealed beneath  the  flowers;  then  the  second,  after 
hope  had  failed,  after  disappointment  and  miscalcula- 
tion— if  we  can  employ  those  words;  for,  even  after 
such  a  fall,  after  the  degradation  of  rank,  after  the 
abortive  conspiracy  and  imprisonment,  her  incorrigible 
nature,  returning  to  its  accustomed  scenes,  displayed 
anew  the  same  pride,  the  same  intoxication,  the  same 
absorption  in  self,  the  same  faculty  of  active  and  noisy 
illusion,  so  that  she  actually  felt  herself  still  young  at 
seventy  years  of  age,  and  as  much  of  a  shepherdess  as 
ever.  Never  was  any  one  more  naively  goddess  and 
shepherdess  than  the  Duchesse  du  Maine.  She  played 
the  comedy  to  the  very  last,  never  once  suspecting 
that  it  was  comedy. 

"Put  me,  as  ever,  at  the  feet  of  Mme.  la  Duchesse 
du  Maine,"  wrote  Voltaire  from  Berlin,  in  1752  (she 
was  then  seventy-six  years  old);  "hers  is  an  elect 
soul;  she  will  love  comedy  to  her  latest  moment,  and 
when  she  falls  ill,  I  advise  you  to  administer  some  fine 
play  to  her  instead  of  Extreme-unction.     People  die  as 


40  Ube  Bucbesse  Du  /iDatne. 

they  live.  .  .  ."  To  these  words  we  may  add,  to 
complete  the  picture,  that,  loving  comedy  as  she  did, 
and  playing  it  incessantly,  she  played  it  ill,  and  was 
none  the  less  applauded. 

And  now,  is  there  not  a  serious  lesson  to  be  drawn 
from  the  picture  of  such  an  existence  and  such  a  na- 
ture, which  to-day  seem  fabulous  ?  It  was  said  of 
the  Duchesse  du  Maine  that  "she  never,  in  all  her 
life,  came  out  of  her  house,  nor  sc  much  as  put  her 
head  out  of  the  windoiv."  Philosophers,  at  any  rate 
some  philosophers,  have  imagined  that  if  man,  after 
his  birth  and  his  first  motions,  did  not  experience 
resistance  by  contact  with  the  things  about  him,  he 
would  never  be  able  to  distinguish  himself  from  the 
exterior  world,  and  would  come  to  believe  that  the 
world  was  a  part  of  himself  and  his  own  body  wher- 
ever he  extended  his  hand  or  his  steps.  He  would,  in 
fact,  end  by  persuading  himself  that  the  whole  world 
was  only  an  appendage  and  an  extension  of  his  per- 
sonal being;  so  that  he  would  say,  in  all  confidence: 
"The  Universe  is  1!"  Mme.  du  Maine  was  such  a 
one;  she  embodied  that  dream  of  the  philosophers. 
She  never  met  with  any  resistance  to  her  wishes  until 
the  period  of  the  Regency.  She  early  put  herself  into 
a  condition  of  never  meeting  with  opposition,  by 
shutting  herself  up  in  that  little  Court  of  Sceaux,  where 
all  was  hers,  and  hers  alone.  Any  will  other  than  her 
own  would  have  seemed  to  her  an  impertinence  and 
a  rebellion.     When  she  did  "come  out  of  her  house," 


ITbe  H)ucbesse  &u  ^aine.  41 

however,  and  had  to  meet  real  difficulties,  she  struck 
against  them,  and  was  wrecked.  In  that  mad  con- 
spiracy which  she  undertook  out  of  spite  against  the 
Regent  (1718),  and  into  which  she  forced  her  timid 
husband,  she  was  obliged  to  see  that  the  world  was 
larger,  more  real,  more  difficult  to  move  than  she  had 
thought  it.  Any  other  than  she  would  have  learned 
a  lesson,  or  at  any  rate  would  have  felt  some  mortifica- 
tion or  depression;  but  the  force  of  her  nature  and  of 
early  impressions  carried  the  day.  Returning  to 
Sceaux  after  a  hard  experience  of  humiliation  and  dis- 
grace (1720),  she  placed  herself  again,  little  by  little, 
in  the  same  conditions  in  which  she  had  formerly 
lived ;  again  she  found  no  resistance,  and  soon  forgot 
there  was  any  for  her  outside  of  her  own  valley.  She  re- 
mained as  convinced  as  ever  that  the  law  of  the  world, 
when  it  worked  properly,  was  that  all  things  were  for 
her,  and  solely  for  her.  In  a  word,  she  was  like  a  person 
who  has  tumbled  by  accident  out  of  a  first-story  win- 
dow, without  much  injury,  but  who,  for  that  reason, 
never  again  looks  out  of  a  window. 

it  is  possible  to  speak  of  Mme.  du  Maine  with  cer- 
tainty and  as  if  we  had  known  her,  for  we  have  the 
most  direct,  intimate,  and  sure  testimony  about  her. 
She  took  into  her  service  in  171 1,  under  the  title  of 
waiting-woman,  a  person  of  worth,  who  was  not 
below  any  station,  who  was  fitted  to  be  the  equal 
and  who  was  the  rival  in  intellect  of  the  most  distin- 
guished persons  of  her  day,  uniting  gravity  to  gaiety, 


42  TLbc  H)ucbesse  &u  /IDalne. 

and  possessed  of  a  heart  that  kept  its  full  value,  even 
when  time  had  v^ithered  it.  Mile,  de  Launay  remained 
with  her  mistress  for  more  than  forty  years,  and  left 
behind  her  racy  Memoirs,  which  have  long  been  greatly 
admired  for  the  quality  of  their  language  and  the  charm 
of  the  narrative.  In  reading  Mile,  de  Launay,  and  in 
following  her  through  the  various  vicissitudes  of  her 
menial  condition,  we  say  with  La  Bruyere:  "The 
advantage  of  Great  persons  over  other  men  is  im- 
mense in  one  particular.  I  concede  to  them  their 
high  living,  their  rich  furniture,  their  horses,  dogs, 
monkeys,  fools,  and  flatterers;  but  I  envy  them  the 
happiness  of  having  in  their  service  persons  who 
equal  them  in  heart  and  mind,  and  often  surpass 
them."  Mile,  de  Launay  herself,  who  has,  perhaps, 
never  yet  been  given  her  true  rank  as  moralist,  re- 
presents to  my  mind  a  female  La  Bruyere,  placed  in 
the  alcove  of  her  princess.  She  does  not  tell  all,  but 
she  sees  all;  and  by  weighing  her  words,  she  gives 
to  her  observations  a  more  concise  and  ineffaceable 
character. 

She  represents  to  us  marvellously  that  talent  for 
saying  the  right  thing  well  which  was  peculiar  to 
the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  and  which  was  the  first 
characteristic  that  attracted  her  attention :  "  I  gave  it  to 
her  wholly  and  without  effort,"  says  Mile,  de  Lau- 
nay; "for  no  one  ever  spoke  with  more  correctness, 
clearness,  and  fluency,  or  in  a  nobler  and  more 
natural   manner.     Her   mind  employed  neither  trick 


Zbc  Ducbesse  &u  /IDalne.  43 

nor  figure  of  speech,  nor  anything  that  could  be 
called  invention.  Forcibly  struck  by  a  subject,  her 
mind  rendered  it  as  the  glass  of  a  mirror  reflects, 
without  adding,  without  omitting,  or  changing  any- 
thing." No  words  could  better  depict  all  that  was 
natural,  accomplished,  and  even,  in  a  certain  sense, 
just  and  correct,  in  that  quick  mind  and  speech, 
always  itself  in  the  midst  of  her  artificial  world.  Ex- 
pression, in  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  was  equal, 
neither  more  nor  less,  to  impression;  and  both  were 
always  clear  and  vivid.  "Language  is  never  so  per- 
fect as  when  you  speak  it,  or  when  people  speak  of 
you,"  Mme.  de  Lambert  wrote  to  her.  Take  out  the 
compliment,  and  the  praise  is  the  same  as  that  we 
have  just  read. 

All  those  who  have  written  of  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine,  note  this  "precision"  of  her  mind  and  the 
"accuracy"  [justesse]  felt  in  her  brilliancy.  In  this 
respect,  she  belonged  to  that  school  at  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century  to  which  Mme.  de  Maintenon 
had  taught  the  lesson  that  long  sentences  are  a  defect. 

Mile,  de  Launay  also  initiates  us  into  the  long  train 
of  caprices,  ambitions,  and  fantastic  games  of  this 
clever  and  arbitrary  spoilt  child.  She  shows  her  to 
us,  and  shows  herself  beside  her,  conspiring  all  night 
with  her  pen,  striving,  by  dint  of  memorials  and 
letters,  to  stir  up  against  the  Regent  a  Fronde  which 
should  bear  the  stamp  of  wit  and  bel-esprit.  After 
the  imprisonment  of  the  princess  and  the  waiting- 


44  TLbc  Ducbesse  ^u  /iDaine* 

maid,  an  imprisonment  which  did  not  redound  to 
the  honour  of  the  one,  but  was  the  glory  of  the 
other,  Mile,  de  Launay,  ennobled  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world  by  her  constancy,  returned  to  Sceaux  with  her 
mistress,  who  rewarded  that  constancy  by  putting 
her  (although  with  a  shade  of  difference)  on  the  foot- 
ing of  her  ladies.  Little  by  little,  the  miniature  Court 
was  repeopled  and  reanimated;  the  whirlwind  began 
again.  Dream  and  delirium  were  soon  in  full  swing. 
But  a  rather  spicy  episode  must  here  find  its  place 
when  the  history  of  the  Queen  of  Sceaux  is  written. 

Mile,  de  Launay,  whenever  she  stayed  in  Paris,  saw 
much  of  Mme.  de  Lambert,  and  went  to  her  "Tues- 
days " — that  was  the  day  on  which  Mme.  de  Lambert 
gathered  around  her  Fontenelle,  La  Motte,  Mairan,  the 
Abbe  Mongault,  and  several  other  academicians  and 
wits.  Now  it  happened  that  Mile,  de  Launay  and  Mme. 
de  Lambert  read,  at  one  of  these  Tuesdays,  letters  which 
they  had  received  from  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  who, 
being  informed  of  the  honour  done  to  her  letters,  pre- 
tended to  be  frightened  at  their  production  before  so 
learned  and  formidable  a  company.  Out  of  this  grew 
a  correspondence  between  herself  and  La  Metto(i726). 
The  latter  was  fifty-four  years  old  and  blind;  the 
duchess  was  nearing  fifty.  The  blind  wit  took  to 
playing  lover;  Mme.  du  Maine  played  artless  inno- 
cence and  pastorals.  Presently  it  became  a  question 
of  how  to  make  a  Serene  Highness  understand  that 
the  lover  was  in  love  with  her,  without  pronouncing 


Tlbe  2>ucbesse  Du  /IDaine.  45 

the  word  love,  and  how  to  turn  and  twist  that  gallant 
idea  to  every  meaning,  and  simulate  an  ardour,  still 
restrained  within  terms  of  respect,  in  order  to  obtain 
from  her  certain  favours.  The  first  of  these  favours  was 
that  she  should  sign  her  name  in  full:  Louise  Bene- 
dicte  de  Bourbon.  La  Motte's  game  was  then  to  say 
that  this  signature  of  Louise  Benedicte  de  Bourbon 
could  not  last;  giving  it  to  be  understood  that  he  was 
devouring  it  with  kisses,  and  he  begged,  clamorously, 
for  another  signature.  "  I  have,  with  your  permission, 
almost  worn  out  the  first,"  he  wrote. — O  Moliere! 
Moliere  of  Les  PrecieuseSy  where  wert  thou  ?  In  read- 
ing this  correspondence,  refined  to  the  quintessence  of 
absurdity,  we  understand  the  weariness  of  those  who, 
spending  their  lives  at  Sceaux  in  making  wit  by  night 
and  by  day,  could  not  help  calling  the  little  Court  "the 
Galleys  of  Bel-Esprit"  and  crying  for  mercy.  The 
charming  Prince  de  Ligne  used  to  say:  "I  think  I 
should  have  been  bored  by  the  Duchesse  du  Maine; 
she  had  a  twist  to  her  mind  as  well  as  to  her  shoul- 
ders. Sceaux  was  the  country-house  of  the  hotel 
de  Rambouillet." 

During  this  second  epoch  of  Sceaux,  the  duchess 
placed  at  the  head  of  those  she  called  her  "swains  " 
the  witty  Marquis  de  Sainte-Aulaire,  who  wrote  his 
famous  quatrain  to  her  when  he  was  ninety  years  old; 
it  was  very  rejuvenating  to  the  duchess  to  give  herself 
so  old  a  swain;  she  seemed  like  a  child  beside  him. 
She  managed  to  combine,  no  one  exactly  knows  how, 


46  Ube  Ducbesse  M  /IDaine* 

religion  with  her  various  gallant,  bucolic,  and  mytho- 
logical practices,  and  one  day  she  requested  M.  de 
Sainte-Aulaire  to  go  to  confession  with  her,  to  which 
he  replied, 

My  Shepherdess,  in  vain  1  seek, 

Nothing  is  on  my  conscience. 
In  pity  suffer  me  to  sin, 

Then  I  may  feel  penitence. 

Voltaire  was  one  of  the  guests,  if  not  one  of  the 
swains  of  Sceaux;  and  he  made  certain  memorable 
sojourns  there.  In  the  autumn  of  1746,  having  com- 
promised his  safety  by  one  of  those  imprudences  that 
were  so  habitual  with  him,  he  arrived  one  evening  to 
ask  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  for  an  asylum.  She  hid 
him  in  a  remote  apartment,  where  the  shutters  were 
kept  closed  all  day.  Voltaire  worked  by  candle-light, 
and  during  the  two  months  he  lived  in  this  way  he 
composed  a  number  of  his  pretty  Cotites,  especially 
"Zadig,"  and  every  night  he  went  to  read  them  to 
the  duchess,  who,  having  lost  the  habit  of  sleeping, 
slept  less  on  those  nights  than  ever.  Other  appear- 
ances of  Voltaire  at  the  little  Court  of  Sceaux  are  on 
record,  and  all  were  singular. 

In  spite  of  this  demand  for  wit  and  intellect  and  for 
the  persons  who  were  best  supplied  with  them,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  influence  of  the  Court  of 
Sceaux  was  of  any  benefit  to  Letters,  or  that  it  ever  in- 
spired anything.  Nothing  was  felt  there  of  the  life- 
giving  and  fructifying  action  that  comes  from  a  true 


Ube  Ducbesse  M  /IDaine.  47 

centre.  Nothing  was  seen  there  but  a  round  of  en- 
chantments, planned  and  directed,  to  which  minds 
already  formed  came  to  lay  their  homage  at  the  feet  of 
the  divinity  of  the  place,  and  to  exert  themselves  in 
rivalry  to  amuse  her.  To  me  the  most  impressive 
side  of  the  little  Court,  and  the  one  for  which  alone  it 
seems  to  be  memorable,  is  the  moral  side,  the  side 
which  affords  food  for  human  observation  of  preju- 
dices, eccentricities,  and  absurdities.  If  you  wish  to 
study  in  a  perfect  specimen,  and  as  if  under  the  mi- 
croscope, the  dainty  egotism,  the  fantastic  and  coquet- 
tish despotism  of  a  princess  of  the  blood  in  the  olden 
time,  and  the  artless  impossibility  in  which  she  lives 
of  conceiving  any  other  existence  in  the  world  than 
her  own,  go  to  Sceaux;  there  you  will  see  these  gross 
defects  in  miniature,  just  as  we  see  gold-fish  moving 
in  the  sunshine  in  a  transparent  bowl.  You  will  see 
that  spoilt  child  of  sixty  and  more,  to  whom  ex- 
perience has  taught  nothing, — for  experience  implies 
reflection  and  an  inward  study  of  self, — you  will  see 
her  to  the  last  assembling  a  crowd  around  her;  and  to 
those  who  wonder  at  her  doing  so,  she  will  reply:  "  I 
am  unfortunate  enough  not  to  be  able  to  do  without 
the  things  I  do  not  care  for."  It  was  necessary  that 
every  room  in  that  palace  of  Armida  should  be  filled, 
no  matter  how  or  by  whom;  a  vacuum  was  the  one 
thing  dreaded. 

"The  desire  to  be  surrounded  increases,"  writes  Mme.  de  Staal 
(Mile,  de  Launay)  to  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  "and  I  foresee  that  if  you 


48  '^bc  H)ucbesse  ^u  /iDatne. 

have  an  apartment  and  do  not  fill  it,  there  will  be  great  regret  for 
what  you  lose,  no  matter  what  it  is.  Great  people,  by  dint  of  expand- 
ing themselves,  become  so  thin  one  can  see  daylight  through  them ; 
it  is  a  fine  siady  to  contemplate  them;  I  know  nothing  that  brings  one 
more  surely  back  to  philosophy." 

Thus  did  Mile,  de  Launay,  the  La  Bruyere  of  Sceaux, 
observe  things;  and  she  crowns  her  Memoirs  by  a 
portrait  of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  which  ought  to  be 
here  transcribed  at  full  length,  so  complete  and  fin- 
ished is  it,  and  so  well  does  she  sum  up  an  entire 
species  in  the  person  of  its  most  singular  individual. 
It  is  a  piece  of  the  finest  and  most  delicate  moral 
physiology.     I  give  its  principal  features : 

"  Mme.  la  Duchesse  du  Maine,  at  sixty  years  of  age,  has  not  yet 
learned  anything  from  experience;  she  is  a  child  of  much  intelligence; 
she  has  the  defects  and  the  charm  of  a  child.  Inquiring  and  credu- 
lous, she  has  desired  to  acquire  all  kinds  of  knowledge;  but  is  satisfied 
to  get  them  superficially.  The  conclusions  of  those  who  brought  her 
up  are  to  her  principles  and  rules,  about  which  her  mind  has  never 
formed  the  slightest  doubt;  she  submitted  herself  to  them  once  for  all. 
Her  provision  of  ideas  is  made;  she  would  reject  the  best-demonstrated 
truths,  and  resist  the  best  arguments,  if  they  conflicted  with  the  first 
impressions  she  received.  All  examination  is  impossible  to  her  vola- 
tility of  mind,  and  doubt  is  a  condition  that  her  weakness  cannot  en- 
dure. Her  Catechism  and  Descartes's  Philosophy  are  two  systems  that 
she  understands  equally  well. 

"  The  idea  she  has  of  herself  is  a  conviction  she  has  accepted  like 
all  her  other  opinions.  She  believes  in  herself  just  as  she  believes  in 
God  and  in  Descartes,  without  examination  or  discussion.  Her  mir- 
ror has  not  been  able  to  raise  the  slightest  doubt  in  her  mind  as  to  the 
charms  of  her  face;  the  testimony  of  her  eyes  has  no  weight  with 
her  against  the  judgment  of  those  who  decided  that  she  was  beautiful 
and  well-formed.  Her  vanity  is  of  a  singular  kind  ;  but  it  seems  less 
shocking  because  it  is  unreflecting  ;  though  for  that  very  reason  it  is 
more  absurd. 

"  Intercourse  with  her  is  slavery  ;   her  tyranny  is  undisguised  ;  she 


Ube  Bucbesse  M  /iDaine.  49 

never  deigns  to  colour  it  with  an  appearance  of  friendship.  She  says, 
ingenuously,  that  she  '  has  the  misfortune  not  to  be  able  to  do  without 
persons  for  whom  she  cares  nothing  at  all.'  And  she  proves  it.  She 
hears  with  indifference  of  the  death  of  those  who,  if  they  kept  her 
waiting  a  quarter  of  an  hour  for  a  walk  or  a  game  of  cards,  would 
make  her  weep." 

This  insensibility  was  proved  to  the  letter  upon  the 
death  of  the  Duchesse  d'Estrees,  which  took  place 
suddenly  at  Anet  in  1747.  It  seemed  that  Mme.  du 
Maine  could  not  exist  without  that  duchess,  who  be- 
came the  manager  of  all  her  pleasures,  the  Malezieu 
of  her  last  years.  She  was  buried;  "  then  the  curtain 
was  lowered,  and  no  one  ever  spoke  of  her  again." 
The  author  of  the  portrait  goes  on  to  show  us  in  this 
way  all  the  artless  vices  of  her  princess,  all  her  good 
qualities  without  soul  and  without  ties,  her  religion 
without  piety,  her  profusion  without  generosity,  much 
information  and  no  real  knowledge,  "all  the  eager- 
ness of  friendship  with  none  of  its  sentiments,"  not 
the  slightest  suspicion  of  human  sympathy  and  reci- 
procity :  "  there  is  no  such  thing  as  conversation  with 
her;  she  does  not  care  to  be  understood;  it  suffices 
her  to  have  listeners."  Mile,  de  Launay  concludes  by 
quoting  the  following  saying,  which  expresses  the  re- 
sult of  her  study,  and  which  the  little  duchess  might 
well  have  written  of  herself: 

"  She"  (the  Duchesse  du  Maine)  "sent  word  to  a  person  of  much 
intelligence  that  '  Princes  were  in  the  moral  world  what  monsters  were 
in  the  physical  :  we  see  openly  in  them  the  vices  that  are  unseen  in 
other  men.'  " 

VOL.  I. — 4. 


5©  Ube  Ducbesse  M  /IDaine. 

That  conclusion  is  true  of  all  those  who  are  wor- 
shipped and  believe  themselves  born  to  be  wor- 
shipped, from  Nebuchadnezzar  to  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine.  But,  while  contemplating  them  with  a  sort  of 
amazement  (for,  under  this  more  or  less  royal  form,  the 
species  is  now  disappearing  day  by  day),  let  us  avoid 
our  own  reefs  and  endeavour  not  to  overflow  in  self- 
complacency;  let  us  remember  that  in  them  there  was 
much  of  ourselves;  that  their  defects  are  those  that  we 
might  have  to-morrow  if  we  were  not  restrained  and 
warned  by  the  resistance  of  things.  In  place  of  these 
people  born  demigods,  who  were  the  monstrous  pro- 
duct of  the  old  regime,  let  us  put,  in  idea,  the  parvenus, 
who  are  the  habitual  product  of  the  new  state  of  things. 
We  know  the  parvenu  on  the  morrow  of  a  revolu- 
tion, for  we  have  seen  him,  that  being,  that  monster 
characteristic  of  modern  society.  Man  may  turn  and 
overturn  situations,  he  will  not  change  his  defects  or 
his  perversities;  we  see  them  all  reappear;  only  they 
reproduce  themselves,  according  to  their  period,  in 
forms  more  or  less  noble,  polished,  and  agreeable; 
and  the  form  that  combined  excess  of  egotism  with 
delicacy  of  mind  and  politeness  is  rather  that  of 
the  past. 


fll^a^ame  be  StaaUBelaunai?. 


51 


/B^a^ame  &C  5taal*2)elaunap. 

CERTAINLY  the  nineteenth  is  the  most  retro- 
spective of  centuries.  We  are  never  weary 
of  searching,  stirring,  disclosing  the  past. 
At  the  same  time  that  industrial  activity  and  scien- 
tific invention  are  going  forward  in  all  directions 
towards  the  new  and  towards  the  unknown,  intel- 
lectual activity,  which  does  not  find  sufficient  food 
in  the  works  or  thoughts  of  the  present  day,  and  is 
often  in  danger  of  turning  against  itself,  looks  back  in 
search  of  an  object,  and  finds  it  among  the  things  of 
an  olden  time,  whether  those  of  four  thousand  years 
ago,  or  those  of  yesterday :  little  we  care  what  period, 
provided  we  can  occupy  and  interest  ourselves  in  it, 
and  that  our  mind  and  our  curiosity  can  lodge  there, 
if  only  for  the  passing  moment.  To-day,  a  well- 
known  man  of  Letters,  M.  Barriere,  is  publishing  a 
Collection,  made  with  taste,  of  the  numerous  Memoirs 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  from  the  Regency  to  the  Di- 
rectory ;  it  is  a  fortunate  idea,  which  will  enable  us  to  see 
again,  in  its  daily  existence,  an  epoch  that  has  for  many 
persons  already  passed  into  the  condition  of  romance. 
This,  if  I  count  correctly,  is  the  third  time  since 

53 


54  /IDaC)ame  &e  5taal*S)elaunai?. 

1800,  that  fashion  and  publication  have  turned  to 
the  Memoirs  of  that  period.  The  first  period  of  such 
return  was  that  of  the  rebirth  of  society,  under  the 
Consulate  and  the  first  years  of  the  Empire.  Then  it 
was  that  the  Vicomte  de  Segur  published  his  Memoir 
of  Bezenval  ;  that  M.  Craufurd  published  those  of 
Mme.  du  Hausset;  and  that  the  series  of  little  volumes 
from  the  publishing  house  of  Leopold  Colin  made 
their  appearance.  The  second  period  was  under 
the  Restoration  ;  here  historical  and  political  interests 
had  sway.  Long  series  of  complete  Memoirs  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  of  the  French  Revolution  ap- 
peared, in  which  M.  Barriere  played  an  important 
part  as  editor.  To-day,  for  the  third  time,  under  this 
return  of  fashion,  nothing  more  than  an  interest  of 
literary  taste  is  concerned,  and  in  our  opinion  this 
indifference  is  not  a  very  propitious  condition  for 
judging  rightly,  or  for  correcting  old  impressions  and 
forming  others  new  and  definitive. 

Madame  de  Staal  deserved,  by  good  right,  to  open 
the  series,  for  it  is  with  her  that  the  style  and  tone 
characteristic  of  the  women  of  the  eighteenth  century 
properly  begins.  An  eloquent  writer,  M.  Cousin,  in 
the  sketch,  so  full  of  ardour,  which  he  made  of  the 
women  of  the  seventeenth  century,  loudly  awarded 
them  the  preference  over  the  women  of  the  succeed- 
ing age.  I  understand  him  :  the  moment  we  bring 
forth  grandeur,  contrast  of  character,  splendour  of 
circumstances,  there  can  be  no  hesitation.     Whom 


MADAME  DE  STAAL-DELAUNAY. 
From  the  painting  by  Mignard. 


/IDaOame  De  StaaUDelaunag.  55 

can  we  contrast  with  women  some  of  whom  carried 
into  cloisters  loftier  souls  than  those  of  Corneille's 
heroines  ;  while  others,  after  all  the  vicissitudes  and 
tempests  of  their  human  lives,  have  had  the  signal 
honour  to  be  lauded  and  proclaimed  by  Bossuet  ? 
Nevertheless,  as,  in  the  matter  of  womankind, 
strength  and  grandeur  are  not  everything,  I  cannot, 
for  my  part,  extend  preference  to  exclusion.  Neither 
the  women  of  the  sixteenth  century — though  they 
suffered  the  wrong  of  being  seared  by  Brautome — 
nor  those  of  the  eighteenth,  although  it  is  the  tone 
of  the  day  to  be  all  the  more  severe  upon  them  be- 
cause they  are  supposed  to  have  been  more  indulg- 
ent, are,  in  my  opinion,  to  be  thus  despised.  What 
is  it,  after  all,  that  is  in  question,  if  not  grace,  intellect, 
and  charm  (I  speak  of  the  charm  that  survives  and 
still  is  felt  throughout  the  ages).^  Now  the  ^Ute  of 
women,  in  all  three  of  those  centuries,  were  abund- 
antly and  diversely  gifted  with  those  qualities.  This 
diversity  reminds  me  of  the  charming  story  of  the 
"Three  Manners,"  each  of  which,  according  to  the 
Athenians  of  Voltaire,  was  successful  in  its  turn;  and 
had  there  been  a  fourth  manner  of  pleasing,  who 
would  quarrel  with  it  ?  1  would  even  go  so  far  as  not 
to  exclude  from  competition  the  women  of  the  nine- 
teenth century — if  the  time  had  come  to  form  a  judg- 
ment upon  them.  But  let  us  not  question  too  much 
for  the  present  half-hour,  but  keep  to  Mme.  de  Staal- 
Delaunay  and  my  subject. 


s6  /IDaOame  De  StaaUDelauna^, 

Inasmuch  as,  in  connection  witli  women,  I  liave 
used  that  word  "century,"  I  must  be  still  further  allowed 
to  insist  on  certain  distinctions  that  I  think  necessary, 
and  on  classification — a  villainous  term  which  I  cannot 
avoid.  The  women  of  the  sixteenth  century,  I  have 
elsewhere  said,  were  too  much  put  to  one  side  in  the 
studies  that  have  lately  been  made  of  the  beginnings 
of  polite  society  in  France.  Roederer  sacrificed  them 
to  his  idol,  the  hotel  de  Rambouillet.  We  shall 
return,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  to  those  women  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  to  those  contemporaries  of  the 
three  Marguerites,  who  knew  so  well  how  to  carry 
on,  abreast  with  public  matters,  conversation  and 
pleasures.  "I  have  often  heard  women  of  the  high- 
est rank  talk  and  discuss  with  ease,  with  elegance, 
the  gravest  matters  of  morals,  of  politics,  of  physics." 
This  was  a  testimony  given  to  French  women  by  an 
astonished  German,  who  wrote  of  his  travels  in  Latin 
and  at  a  date  (1616)  when  the  hotel  de  Rambouillet 
could  not  as  yet  have  produced  its  results. 

However  that  may  be,  the  seventeenth  century 
certainly  opens  with  Mme.  de  Rambouillet,  and 
closes  with  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  In  like  manner, 
the  eighteenth  begins  with  the  Duchesse  du  Maine 
and  Mme.  de  Staal,  and  ends  with  Mme.  de  Stael 
and  Mme.  Roland;  I  give  that  latter  name  purposely, 
for  it  marks  an  event — that  of  solid  merit  and  grace 
introduced  into  the  middle  classes,  and  thenceforth 
making  an  increasing  place  therein.     I   know  how 


/IDa^ame  &e  StaaUBelaunai?.  57 

true  taste  and  refinement  were  long  the  almost  ex- 
clusive appanage  of  the  aristocratic  world;  and  how, 
in  some  respects,  and  in  spite  of  the  changes  that 
have  supervened,  they  are  so  still.  But  it  is  no  less 
evident  that  the  farther  we  progress,  the  more  true 
courtesy,  distinction  of  nature  and  tone  are  found 
naturally  compatible  with  a  middle-class  condition; 
the  name  of  Mme.  Roland  signifies  all  this.  After 
her,  women  of  that  station  began  to  possess  as  of 
right  what  was  formerly  considered  an  audacious 
usurpation. 

The  women  of  the  eighteenth  century,  usually  so- 
called,  the  primitive  type  of  whom  was  transmitted 
without  alteration  from  the  Duchesse  du  Maine, 
through  the  well-known  names  of  Mme.  de  Staal- 
Delaunay,  Mme.  de  Lambert,  Mme.  du  Deffand,  the 
Marechale  de  Luxembourg,  Mme.  de  Coislin,  Mme.  de 
Crequy,  down  to  Mme.  de  Tesse  and  the  Princesse  de 
Poix,  divide  themselves,  nevertheless,  into  two  dis- 
tinct groups — those  before  Jean-Jacques,  and  those 
after.  All  the  latter,  those  after  Jean-Jacques,  that  is 
to  say,  those  who  came  under  his  influence,  were 
kindled  into  passion  for  him,  had  a  vein  of  sentiment 
which  their  predecessors  never  sought  and  never 
knew.  The  latter,  the  women  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury before  Rousseau  (and  Mme.  de  Staal-Delaunay 
presents  a  perfect  and  most  faithful  image  of  these), 
are  purely  the  pupils  of  La  Bruyere.  They  read  him 
in  youth,  they  verified  him  by  experience.     To  that 


58  /IDaOame  De  5taal*S)eIaunay, 

book  of  La  Bruyere  which  seems  to  set  its  seal  on 
their  minds,  add,  if  you  choose,  that  they  had  also 
read  in  early  years  "The  Plurality  of  Worlds"  and 
"The  Search  for  Truth." 

Mme.  de  Staal  begins  the  series  of  the  female 
writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  as  distinctly  as 
Fontenelle  initiated  the  work  of  his  group.  She  was 
born  much  sooner  than  has  been  supposed,  or  than 
her  biographers  have  stated.  A  scholar,  to  whom  we 
owe  many  rectifications  of  this  kind,  M.  Ravenel,  has 
cleared  up  this  point,  which  is  not  without  importance 
to  an  understanding  of  the  life  of  Mile.  Delaunay.  I 
call  her  Mile.  Delaunay  from  habit,  for  (another  cor- 
rection made  by  M.  Ravenel)  she  was  not  so  named. 
Her  father's  name  was  Cordier;  but,  having  been 
obliged  to  leave  the  country  for  some  cause  not  men- 
tioned, he  left  in  France  a  young  and  beautiful  wife, 
who  resumed  her  family  name,  Delaunay,  and  the 
daughter,  in  turn,  took  the  name  of  her  mother,  which 
has  remained  to  her. 

The  young  Cordier-Delaunay  was  born  in  Paris  in 
August,  1684,  and  not  in  1693,  as  was  generally  be- 
lieved. She  was  therefore  nine  years  older  than  has 
been  supposed;  not  that  she  conceals  her  age,  for  she 
nowhere  mentions  it.  She  does  not  give  the  precise 
date  of  her  birth  in  her  Memoirs  (dates,  under  a 
woman's  pen  are  always  rather  nebulous) ;  but  she 
mentions,  in  the  narrative  of  her  youth,  certain  his- 
torical circumstances  which  might  put  us  on  the  right 


/IDa^ame  De  5taal*H)elaunag»  59 

track.  It  results  from  these  extra  nine  years  of  which 
we  have  been  unaware,  that  she  was  fully  twenty- 
seven  years  old  when  she  entered  the  service  of  the 
Duchesse  du  Maine,  consequently  she  was  already  a 
woman  whose  mind  was  formed,  and  who  might 
suffer  from  her  position,  but  would  take  no  moulding 
other  than  that  of  restraint.  It  follows  from  this  great 
advance  in  her  age  that  she  was  thirty-five  years  old 
at  the  time  of  her  love-affair  in  the  Bastille  with  the 
Chevalier  de  Menil,  and  that  she  did  not  marry  the 
Baron  de  Staal  until  her  fifty-first  year.  Hence,  during 
the  course  of  this  existence  of  which  the  bloom  was  so 
short  and  so  quickly  gone,  we  see  how  matters  came 
to  no  result,  and  we  understand  better  the  art  of  deli- 
cate irony  in  that  firm  and  charming  mind,  and  its 
tone  of  enjoyment  without  gaiety  born  of  constant 
thwarting. 

An  oft-quoted  saying  of  Mme.  de  Staal  might  give 
an  idea  that  her  Memoirs  were  not  as  sincere  as  they 
should  be.  "I  have  painted  only  a  half-length  portrait 
of  myself,"  she  replied  one  day  to  a  friend  who  ex- 
pressed surprise  that  she  should  have  told  everything. 
The  saying  was  much  repeated,  and  it  has  done  in- 
justice to  the  veracity  of  the  writer.  Mme.  de  Staal 
was  a  person  of  truth,  and  her  book  is  a  true  book  in 
the  full  acceptation  of  the  word;  that  characteristic  is 
imprinted  on  every  page.  It  is  true  that  on  certain 
delicate  and  reserved  points  she  may  not  have  said 
all:  for  instance,  it  is  possible  that  her  love-passages 


6o  /iDaDame  C)e  StaaUBelaimay. 

in  the  Bastille  with  the  Chevalier  de  Menil  may  have 
gone  a  little  farther  than  she  admits;  all  that  is  very 
likely,  and  no  one  could  reasonably  ask  a  woman  to 
be  more  sincere  on  such  points.  The  reader,  if  he  has 
the  desire,  can  go  the  rest  of  the  way  himself  without 
much  effort.  Lemontey  thinks  he  finds  much  malice 
in  certain  remarks  of  hers  on  the  Abbe  de  Chaulieu, 
when  she  went  to  see  him  on  leaving  the  Bastille 
and  found  him  quite  changed  from  what  he  had  been 
previously  :  "He  was  already  very  ill,"  she  says, 
"  from  the  disease  of  which  he  died  three  weeks  later, 
I  saw  him,  and  I  noticed  how,  in  that  condition,  we 
become  indifferent  to  all  that  is  useless  to  us."  Le- 
montey thinks  he  sees  in  those  words  a  revelation 
that  escaped  her — which  is  being  shrewd  indeed.  Of 
whatever  utility  this  able  woman  may  have  been  in 
past  times  to  the  Abbe  de  Chaulieu,  who  was  almost 
an  octogenarian,  it  is  not  upon  avowals  of  this  kind 
that  I  rest  the  greater  or  less  degree  of  sincerity  of  any 
woman-author  in  the  Memoirs  that  she  writes.  The 
sincerity  I  mean  is  of  another  order;  it  exists  in  the 
sentiments  expressed,  in  the  total  of  the  judgments 
and  the  views;  in  a  person's  not  lauding  him  or  her- 
self directly  or  indirectly,  not  claiming  too  much,  not 
magnifying  self,  looking  at  self  and  others  from  a 
just  point  of  view,  and  daring  to  show  it.  And 
what  book  succeeds  better  than  the  Memoirs  of  Mme. 
de  Staal  in  rendering  exactly  that  perfect  and  often 
cruel  accuracy  of  observation,  that  inexorable  senti- 


/IDa^ame  t>c  StaaUDelaunap.  6i 

ment  of  reality  ?  It  was  she  who  said  these  lasting 
words:  "Truth  is  as  it  can  be;  it  has  no  merit  but 
that  of  being  what  it  is."  Thus  her  Memoirs  are 
the  contrary  of  the  romances  that  we  dream;  like  life 
itself  they  grow  sad  and  sadder. 

A  noble  spirit,  lofty  and  stoical  even  in  its  weak- 
nesses, a  firm  and  free  mind,  stamp  themselves  in 
clear-cut,  delicate  lines  upon  those  Memoirs.  We  ad- 
mire a  sureness  of  ideas  and  tone  that  is  sometimes 
rather  alarming.  There  is  so  little  of  the  superfluous 
that  we  are  tempted  to  ask  if  the  necessary  is  always 
there.  The  words  coldness,  dryness,  enter  our  minds; 
but,  on  reflection,  we  come  to  think  that  we  mean 
in  most  cases  merely  accuracy  and  decision.  Never 
does  her  pen  grope  its  way,  never  does  she  play  with 
her  thought;  she  catches  it  and  carries  it  along  firmly 
and  promptly.  And  there  is  very  much  strength  in 
this  small  display  of  effort.  Pliny  the  Younger,  in  the 
eulogies  he  made  on  certain  writers,  was  wont  to  put 
together  in  one  word,  as  being  closely  united,  two 
qualities,  namely :  amaritudo,  vigour,  born  and  steeped 
in  a  secret  bitterness.  Mile.  Delaunay  (we  may  quote 
Latin  about  a  woman  who  so  nearly  became  Mme. 
Dacier)  possessed  that  vigour.  Freron,  giving  ac- 
count of  her  Memoirs  in  his  Annee  Litteraire  (1755), 
has  well  remarked  that  we  may  apply  to  her  what  she 
said  of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine:  "Her  mind  never 
makes  use  of  turns  of  phrase,  or  figures,  or  anything 
at  all  that  calls  itself  invention.     Vividly  impressed  by 


62  /IDat)ame  t)e  Staal^Belauna^, 

objects,  it  renders  them  as  the  glass  of  a  mirror  reflects, 
without  adding,  without  omitting,  without  changing 
anything."  In  my  opinion,  however,  the  compari- 
son with  the  reflection  of  a  mirror  does  not  go  deep 
enough  for  what  was  in  Mile.  Delaunay;  objects  when 
she  reflects  them  have  the  more  solid  character  of  an 
etching.  Grimm,  in  his  Correspondance  (August  15, 
1775),  in  praising  the  Memoirs,  says:  "The  prose  of 
M.  de  Voltaire  excepted,  I  know  none  more  agree- 
able than  that  of  Mme.  de  Staal."  That  is  true,  al- 
though that  prose,  of  a  clearness  so  charming  and 
novel,  does  not  resemble  that  of  Voltaire,  which  alone 
was  truly  light  and  flowing.  The  simplicity  of  Mme. 
de  Staal's  diction  is  otherwise  contrived.  But  what  am 
1  about  ?  Why  should  I  trouble  myself  with  Grimm 
and  his  opinions,  when,  in  the  most  delicate  and  de- 
lightful literary  volumes  that  French  criticism  has 
produced,  we  possess  the  judgment  and  the  defini- 
tion given  by  M.  Villemain  of  the  manner  and  the 
delicacies  of  Mme.  de  Staal's  style  ? 

In  all  that  concerns  the  person  herself,  the  illustri- 
ous critic  is  severe;  he  thinks  he  sees  in  the  satirical 
sketches  of  the  witty  woman  what  he  calls  "the  sou- 
brette  bias."  Did  Mile.  Delaunay  deserve  this  back- 
handed blow  ?  Was  the  "  indelible  character  of  the 
waiting-maid,"  as  she  bitterly  calls  it  herself,  so  indel- 
ible that  it  follows  her  even  into  the  productions  of 
her  thought  ?  Nothing  could  be  less  founded,  it  seems 
to  me,  than  such  a  judgment,  nothing  more   unjust. 


/IDa&ame  De  StaaUBelaunai?.  63 

We  have  seen  that  she  was  already  advanced  into 
womanhood  when  she  entered  the  service  of  the 
Duchesse  du  Maine;  she  was  no  longer  a  young  girl 
easy  to  remould.  Her  early  education  had  been  solid, 
choice,  brilliant;  the  convent  of  Saint-Louis  at  Rouen, 
where  she  passed  her  youthful  years,  was  "  like  a  lit- 
tle State  where  she  reigned  as  sovereign."  She,  too, 
had  her  little  Court  of  Sceaux  in  that  convent  where 
M.  Brunei,  M.  de  Rey,  and  the  Abbe  de  Vertot  were 
at  her  feet,  and  where  those  good  ladies,  de  Grieu, 
had  eyes  but  for  her.  "  What  they  did  for  me,"  she 
says,  "cost  me  so  little  that  it  seemed  to  me  only  in  the 
natural  order  of  things.  It  is  only  our  efforts  to  obtain 
things  that  teach  us  their  value.  In  short,  I  acquired, 
though  I  was  so  little,  the  defects  of  great  people; 
which  has  served  me  since  then  to  excuse  them." 

Thus  brought  up,  and  thus  treated,  till  she  was 
twenty-six  years  of  age,  on  the  footing  of  a  perfect 
and  admirable  being,  when,  later,  she  fell  into  servi- 
tude, she  was  like  a  dethroned  little  queen,  and  she 
kept  those  feelings:  "convinced,"  she  says,  "that  it 
is  our  own  actions  only  that  can  degrade  us."  No 
act  of  her  life  contradicted  that  noble  sentiment. 
The  injury  to  her  of  this  early  education  and  exclu- 
sive training  was  rather,  as  she  very  truthfully  points 
out,  to  give  her  a  somewhat  learned  tone,  a  liking  to 
teach,  to  pattern  others  by  herself,  which  was  natural 
in  a  young  woman  who  had  read  the  History  of 
the  Academy  of  Sciences,  and  had  studied  geometry. 


64  /IDat)ame  De  Staal^Belauna^, 

And  here  we  must  observe,  that  in  the  majority 
of  the  passages  quoted  in  proof  of  this  defect,  it 
is  she  herself  who  denounces  it,  and  gaily  does 
the  honours  of  her  person.  More  than  one  reader 
has  failed  to  detect  the  smile  lurking  behind  the 
words. 

The  beginning  of  the  Memoirs  is  full  of  grace  and 
has  something  of  the  novel  in  it;  it  is  thus  that  life 
appeared  to  her  "before  the  charm  ceased,"  before 
illusion  vanished.  The  stay  at  the  Chateau  de  Silly 
with  a  friend  of  her  childhood,  the  arrival  of  the 
young  marquis,  his  natural  indifference,  the  scene  be- 
hind the  hornbeam  hedge  between  the  two  young 
girls,  which  he  hears  without  being  seen,  his  curios- 
ity awakened  far  more  than  his  desire,  her  emotion  in 
thinking  herself  the  object  of  his  affection,  her  self- 
control,  nevertheless,  the  tete-d-tete  walk  in  which 
astronomy  is  so  useful,  and  the  young  soul  tastes  the 
austere  sweetness  of  mastering  itself — all  this  com- 
poses a  romance,  very  simple  and  touching;  it  is  one 
of  those  memories  of  which  there  is  but  one  in  a  life- 
time, a  memory  in  which  the  wearied  heart  can  al- 
ways rest  and  be  refreshed.  These  may  be  nothings, 
but  how  true  they  are  !  how  they  cling  to  secret 
fibres — to  those  of  every  one  !  "  The  feeling  that  en- 
graved these  little  facts  upon  my  memory,"  says  the 
author,  '*  has  remained  a  distinct  recollection,"  Even 
in  depicting  them,  see  how  her  sobriety  appears! 
She  permits  herself  only  a  discreet  sketch,  a  delight- 


/SDaDame  De  StaaUBelauna^.  65 

ful  but  restrained  touch,  the  faithful  expression  of 
feelings  too  repressed. 

Nevertheless,  M.  de  Silly  is  the  man  she  most  truly 
loved.  With  what  passionate  vivacity  she  describes 
his  first  departure!  "Mile,  de  Silly  burst  into  tears 
when  he  bade  us  adieu.  I  hid  mine  from  his  eyes 
that  were  more  inquisitive  than  tender;  but  after  he 
had  disappeared,  I  thought  1  should  have  ceased  to 
live.  My  eyes  that  were  wont  to  see  him  could  see 
nothing  more.  I  did  not  deign  to  speak,  for  he  could 
not  hear  me;  /  even  felt  that  I  thought  no  longer." 
Observe  that  last  touch;  it  reminds  me  of  Lamar- 
tine's  line  addressed  to  Nature: 

"  A  single  being  lacks  thee,  and  thou  art  depopulated." 

But  in  Mile.  Delaunay  the  gradation  ends  with 
thought.  This  absence  of  thought  is,  in  truth,  the 
most  violent  symptom  to  the  mind  of  a  philosopher, 
to  whoever  has  begun  by  saying:  "I  think,  there- 
fore I  am."  What  she  adds  is  no  less  noticeable: 
"His  fixed  image  filled  my  soul.  I  felt,  neverthe- 
less, that  every  moment  took  him  farther  from  me, 
and  my  grief  grew  in  the  same  proportion  as  the  dis- 
tance that  parted  us."  Here  we  come  upon  her  de- 
fect; the  grief  that  grew  in  direct  proportion  to  the 
distance  is  more  than  philosophy,  it  is  geometry;  and 
we  can  understand  why  M.  de  Silly  should  write  to 
his  young  friend,  in  a  letter  which  she  transcribes: 
"Use,  I  beg  of  you,  the  simplest  expressions;  above 

VOL.   I. — 5. 


66  /iDa&ame  &e  Staal^Delauna^, 

all,  make  no  use  of  those  that  belong  to  the  Sciences." 
As  a  man  of  the  world,  and  full  of  tact,  he  had  laid 
his  finger  at  once  on  the  slight  defect. 

This,  however,  was  an  early  inclination,  soon  re- 
pressed, which  scarcely  affected  an  exquisite  diction 
and  the  best  of  language.  When  the  marquis  returned 
shortly  after  to  Silly,  the  flower  of  sentiment  in  her 
heart  was  already  slightly  wilted;  reflection  had 
spoken.  These  few  moments  of  enchantment  were, 
therefore,  a  very  short  springtime  in  the  life  of  Mile. 
Delaunay;  but  their  perfume  was  lasting  enough  to  fill 
her  soul  during  the  most  exposed  years  of  her  youth, 
and  to  preserve  her  at  that  time  from  all  other  risks. 
She  was  twenty-three  or  twenty-four  years  of  age 
when  she  first  met  M.  de  Silly,  and  he  was  thirty-six 
or  thirty-seven.  His  cold,  ambitious  character  seemed 
more  marked  as  he  grew  older;  Grimm  declares  that 
he  was  a  pedant  and  not  amiable;  he  tells  us  that  dis- 
appointed ambition  finally  so  disturbed  his  mind  that 
he  flung  himself  from  a  window  and  was  killed. 
Mme.  de  Staal  glides  over  that  frightful  detail.  She 
found  him  agreeable  in  his  last  years,  and,  in  spite  of 
the  errors  of  the  intervening  ones,  she  never  ceased 
to  remain  under  subjection  to  his  old  prestige.  She 
even  carried  her  friendship,  during  a  violent  attack  of 
passion  which  convulsed  him,  so  far  as  to  assist  him 
in  the  character  of  doctor-moralist:  I  can  find  no 
other  terms  so  appropriate;  the  letters  that  she  wrote 
him  at  this  period   are  those  of  a  confessor  and  a 


ZiDaDame  ^c  StaaUDelaunaiP,  67 

physician  combined.  They  show  consummate  experi- 
ence, lofty  wisdom,  and  are  charming  still,  even  under 
the  supreme  disillusion.  Like  all  true  doctors,  she  bet- 
ter knows  the  veritable  condition  of  the  patient  than 
the  means  of  curing  it;  she  can  offer  only  palliatives, 
and  she  herself  directs  him  to  ambition! 

'*  I  had  hoped  much,"  she  writes  to  him,  "from  time 
and  absence;  but  it  seems  they  have  produced  no- 
thing; on  the  contrary,  the  evil  has  grown  worse.  The 
sole  resource  that  I  can  imagine  would  be  an  occupa- 
tion, strong  and  satisfying  from  the  dignity  of  its 
object;  love  has  no  such  expedient,  I  wish  that 
ambition  could  give  it  to  you.  You  are  not  made  to 
live  without  passions;  frivolous  amusements  cannot 
nourish  a  heart  as  voracious  as  yours.  Try  to  find 
an  object  more  vast  than  its  capacity,  otherwise 
you  will  for  ever  feel  the  loathing  that  all  that  is 
mediocre  inspires."  M.  de  Silly  died  November  19, 
1727;  he  was  lieutenant-general  of  the  armies  of  the 
king. 

If  M.  de  Silly  is  the  hero  of  the  first  part  of  the 
Memoirs,  the  hero  of  the  second  part  is  undoubt- 
edly M.  de  Maisonrouge,  lieutenant  of  the  king  at  the 
Bastille,  that  perfect  model  of  a  passionate  and  delicate 
lover,  it  is  well  that  Mme.  de  Staal,  who  so  cruelly 
sacrificed  him  to  the  sulky  Chevalier  de  Menil,  should 
avenge  him  upon  herself,  by  the  interest  she  sheds 
upon  him,  and  by  the  affectionate  colouring  with 
which   she   surrounds   him.     Alas!    at  the   moment 


68  /iDaDame  5e  Staal*2)elaunai?, 

when  she  most  appreciates  the  devotion  and  merits 
of  the  poor  Maisonrouge,  it  is  the  other  whom  she 
regrets!  With  a  soul  so  firm,  a  mind  so  superior,  yet 
the  miserable  plaything  of  an  unworthy  passion,  she 
flees  from  him  who  seeks  her,  and  seeks  the  man  who 
flees  her,  according  to  the  eternal  cross-purposes  of 
the  heart.  Oh!  how  truly  it  gave  her  the  right  to  say 
— as  she  did  later,  when  the  storm  had  passed,  in  a 
letter  to  M.  de  Silly — "With  due  deference  to  Mme. 
de  .  .  .,  who  treats  love  so  methodically,  every  one 
in  love  is  for  himself,  and  makes  it  as  he  pleases.  I 
am  surprised  that  so  venerable  a  person  does  not  see 
that  passions  are  aberrations  of  mind  which  are  not 
susceptible  of  the  order  she  wants  to  put  into  them. 
I  think  precepts  on  this  matter  ridiculous;  fixed  rules 
might  as  well  be  made  for  the  manner  in  which  crazy 
people  should  rave." 

I  said  of  Mme.  de  Staal  that  she  was  like  a  first 
pupil  of  La  Bruyere,  but  a  pupil  who  became  the 
equal  of  the  master.  No  writer  could  furnish  as  many 
new,  true,  irrefutable  thoughts  to  add  to  the  chapter 
on  "Women"  as  she;  besides  which,  she  spent 
thirty  years  of  her  life  in  practising  and  commenting 
on  the  chapter  on  "Grandees."  She  observed  the 
latter  at  her  ease,  but  also  to  her  cost,  in  that  little 
Court  of  Sceaux,  exactly  as  we  watch  big  fishes  in  a 
little  pond.  "The  Great,"  she  wrote  to  Mme.  du 
Deffand,  "by  dint  of  stretching  themselves  out  be- 
come so  thin  that  you  can  see  through  them :  it  is  a 


/IDaOame  De  StaaUBelaunar.  69 

fine  study  to  contemplate  them.  I  know  nothing 
that  leads  sooner  to  philosophy." 

The  scenes  with  the  Duchesse  de  la  Ferte  and  the 
adventures  at  Versailles  are  excellent  comedy,  and  in 
the  best  of  taste,  frank  and  simple;  they  are  well  on 
a  par  as  to  pleasantry  with  the  Grammont  Memoirs. 
The  first  scenes  as  waiting-maid  to  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine  are  also  very  amusing.  In  the  art  of  relating 
amusingly,  Mme.  de  Staal  is  a  classic,  and  if  she 
could  judge  of  herself  to-day,  she  would  not  find 
much  reason  to  complain  of  fate.  She  was  not  loved 
by  those  who  she  desired  should  love  her  ;  her  youth 
was  not  all  that  could  be  wished,  and  she  suffered ; 
but  years  brought  her  the  satisfactions  of  thought, 
the  reflecting  enjoyments  of  observation;  she  saw 
true  ;  and  it  was  given  her  to  render  what  she 
saw.  If  she  missed  more  than  one  gift  of  fate, 
she  at  least  had  those  of  mind,  language,  and  taste. 
Some  of  her  least  sayings  have  come  into  the  circu- 
lation of  society,  and  have  added  to  the  riches  of  the 
mind  of  France.  More  than  that:  by  her  noble  con- 
duct during  a  miserable  conspiracy,  she  has  won  a 
place  in  all  future  history.  How  many  statesmen, 
who  think  themselves  great  men,  and  who  are  striv- 
ing all  their  lives,  do  not  obtain  as  much! 

This  tardy  satisfaction,  this  posthumous  triumph, 
were  bought  very  dear,  no  doubt.  The  correspond- 
ence of  Mme.  de  Staal  with  Mme.  du  Deffand  re- 
veals  the   petty   miseries   at   the    bottom  under  an 


70  /IDa5amc  &e  StaaUDelauna^. 

always  agreeable  surface;  we  can  follow  her  habit  of 
mind  and  ironical  gaiety  persisting  ever  throughout 
an  existence  without  pleasure  and  burdened  with  en- 
nui. The  satirical  scenes  in  which  Mme.  du  Chatelet 
and  Voltaire  appear  present  a  brilliant  variety  by  the 
way.  This  correspondence  is  the  true  conclusion 
of  the  Memoirs.  Whatever  may  be  said  by  Freron, 
Mme.  de  Staal  did  well  not  to  prolong  them,  and 
not  to  enlarge  upon  the  closing  years.  There  is  a  de- 
gree of  experience,  of  knowledge  of  the  depths,  past 
which  there  is  no  longer  interest  in  anything,  not 
even  in  recollection ;  we  hasten  when  we  reach  that 
period  to  bar  the  window  and  close  the  curtains  for 
ever.  What  is  there  to  tell  the  world  henceforth, 
after  we  have  said  to  ourselves:  "  How  can  we  really 
care  for  anything  when  we  look  at  it  closely  ?  We 
owe  our  tastes  to  our  mistakes.  If  we  always  saw 
things  as  they  are,  far  from  getting  impassioned  over 
them,  we  should  scarcely  make  use  of  them  at  all." 
That  is  how  Mme.  de  Staal,  in  her  latter  years,  wrote 
to  intimate  friends;  and  on  her  best  days  she  added: 
"My  health  is  pretty  good,  my  life  easy,  and,  if  it 
were  not  for  ennui,  1  should  be  well  enough.  That 
ennui  consists  in  seeing  nothing  that  pleases  me,  and 
doing  nothing  that  amuses  me;  but  when  the  body 
does  not  suffer,  and  the  mind  is  tranquil,  we  ought 
to  think  ourselves  happy." 

One  day,  after  leaving  the  Bastille,  and  before  be- 
coming entirely  resigned  to  the  yoke,  Mile.  Delaunay 


/IDaC>ame  De  Staal*2)elaunai?.  71 

resolved  to  return  and  live  in  her  little  convent  of 
Saint-Louis,  at  Rouen,  where  she  had  passed  her 
only  years  of  happiness.  She  made  the  journey,  but 
returned  in  haste.  The  women  of  the  seventeenth 
century  gladly  took  refuge  in  convents  from  the 
storms  of  the  world,  and  died  there;  not  so  the  wo- 
men of  the  eighteenth:  they  could  no  longer  bear  that 
sort  of  life. 

After  the  letters  to  Mme.  du  Deflfand,  those  of  Mme. 
de  Staal  to  M.  d'Hericourt,  less  studded  with  wit,  give 
a  sadder  and  perhaps  truer  idea  of  her  manner  of  ex- 
istence towards  the  last.  Her  health  diminished,  her 
sight  failed,  and  though  she  lived  on,  she  was  in  the 
way  of  becoming  totally  blind  like  her  friend,  Mme. 
du  Deffand.  Meanwhile,  the  subjection,  the  annoy- 
ances of  her  life  with  a  princess  whose  caprices  were 
not  more  attractive  as  she  grew  older,  rendered  in- 
tolerable a  tie  which  there  was  no  possibility  of  break- 
ing; the  chain  must  be  dragged  to  the  end.  "I  see 
the  misery,"  she  said,  "  but  I  no  longer  feel  it."  That 
is  her  last  pillow.  But  a  terrible  speech  escapes  her  at 
a  return  of  the  springtime:  "  As  for  me,  I  no  longer 
care  for  it  [the  spring] ;  I  am  so  weary  of  seeing  flow- 
ers and  of  hearing  them  talked  about  that  1  await  frost 
and  snow  with  impatience."  After  such  an  utterance 
there  is  nothing  further  to  say. 

She  was  sixty-six  years  old  when  she  died,  June  15, 
1750.  The  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  scarcely  dead, 
three  years  later,  before  it  was  arranged  to  publish  the 


72  /lDa&ame  De  StaaU2)eIauna^. 

Memoirs;  they  appeared  in  1755;  even  the  death  of 
the  Baron  de  Staal  was  not  awaited.  In  those  days 
little  consideration  was  shown  when  it  was  a  ques- 
tion of  securing  pleasures  of  the  mind.  The  book  ob- 
tained at  once  an  immense  success.  Fontenelle,  how- 
ever, who  was  still  living,  was  much  surprised  on 
reading  it:  "  I  am  sorry  for  her,"  he  said;  "1  did 
not  suspect  her  of  such  pettiness.  It  is  written  with 
agreeable  elegance,  but  it  was  not  worth  the  trouble 
of  being  written  at  all."  Trublet  replied  that  all  the 
women  were  of  that  opinion,  but  that  all  the  men 
were  not.  Trublet  was  right;  Fontenelle  was  mis- 
taken. He  was  too  near  to  the  things  that  he  thought 
petty  to  judge  them  fairly. 

These  Memoirs  are,  in  fact,  a  faithful  picture  of 
life.  We  may,  none  of  us,  have  been  trained  in  a 
convent:  none  of  us,  certainly,  have  lived  the  life  of 
the  little  Court  of  Sceaux;  but  whoso  has  felt  the 
keen  impressions  of  youth,  and  has  seen,  almost  im- 
mediately, that  first  charm  lose  its  bloom,  and  its 
freshness  fade  under  the  breath  of  experience,  and  life 
become  arid,  and  at  the  same  time  turbulent  and  pas- 
sionate, until  aridity  is  nothing  else  than  ennui — that 
person,  I  say,  reading  these  Memoirs  will  see  him- 
self and  say,  at  every  page:  "It  is  true."  It  is  the 
special  quality  of  truth  to  live;  above  all,  when  it  is 
clothed  in  clear  and  definite  language.  Huet,  Bishop 
of  Avranches,  tells  us  that  he  was  accustomed,  every 
spring,  to  re-read  Theocritus  under  the  budding  leaf- 


/H^a^ame  ^e  StaaU2)eIauna^,  73 

age  of  the  woods,  at  the  edge  of  a  brook,  and  to  the 
song  of  nightingales.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  Mem- 
oirs of  Mme.  de  Staal  should  be  re-read  at  the  begin- 
ning of  each  winter,  at  the  end  of  autumn,  beneath 
the  November  trees,  to  the  sound  of  the  falling  foliage. 


Xe  Saoe 

(aiatn*1Rene). 


75 


GIL  BLAS,  in  spite  of  its  Spanish  costume  and 
all  the  imitations  that  are  said  to  be  in  it,  is 
one  of  the  most  truly  French  books  that  we 
have.  It  matters  very  little  to  the  quality  of  the  work 
that  the  author  took  his  canvas  here  or  there,  that  he 
inserted  such  or  such  borrowed  episode;  the  merit  of 
the  book  is  not  in  its  general  invention,  but  in  the 
marshalling  and  management  of  each  scene  and  each 
group,  in  the  detail  of  the  talk  and  the  narrative,  in 
the  easy  air  and  the  sportive  gaiety  that  unite  the 
whole.  In  prose  and  under  the  form  of  a  novel,  it  has 
a  merit  and  an  originality  of  the  same  kind  as  those 
of  La  Fontaine.  The  touch  of  Le  Sage  is  wholly 
French;  and  if  our  literature  possesses  a  book  that  is 
good  to  re-read,  after  an  invasion,  after  each  convul- 
sion in  the  moral  or  the  political  order,  or  in  the 
domain  of  taste,  to  calm  the  temper,  restore  the  mind 
to  its  point  of  view,  and  refresh  the  language,  it  is 
Gil  Bias. 

Le  Sage  was  born,  trained,  and  began  to  be  known 
in  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  Twenty-four  years 
younger  than  La  Bruyere,  seventeen   younger  than 

77 


78  Xe  Sage* 

Fenelon,  and  six  years  older  than  Saint-Simon,  he 
belongs  to  a  generation  of  writers  who  were  born 
to  honour  the  succeeding  era,  but  whose  opening 
careers  brightened  the  decline  of  the  great  reign.  His 
most  careful  biographers  date  his  birth  in  1668,  on  the 
peninsula  of  Rhuys,  in  Lower  Brittany,  where  Abelard 
was  abbe.  From  the  depth  of  that  energetic  and 
rugged  province,  whence  great  writers,  innovators 
more  or  less  revolutionary,  have  come  to  us — Lam- 
ennais,  Broussais,  a  later  Rene,  and  others — Alain- 
Rene  Le  Sage  arrived,  mature,  shrewd,  gay,  cured  of 
much  in  advance,  and  possessing  the  least  obstinate 
of  minds.  We  shall  find  nothing  of  the  Breton  in 
him  but  his  pride  of  soul  and  his  independence  of 
character. 

But  how,  and  through  what  trials,  what  obstacles, 
came  he  so  early  to  his  knowledge  of  life,  to  that  com- 
plete and  perfect  maturity  to  which  Nature  destined 
him  ?  We  know  but  few  of  the  events  of  his  life. 
He  received  his  schooling  at  the  college  of  Vannes, 
where  he  had,  it  is  said,  an  excellent  master.  He  lost 
his  mother  at  nine  years  of  age,  and  his  father  at 
fourteen;  this  father  was  a  notary  and  clerk,  like 
Boileau's  father.  He  had  for  guardian  a  negligent 
uncle.  Coming  to  Paris  at  twenty-two  years  of  age 
to  take  his  course  of  philosophy  and  law,  he  led  the 
life  of  a  young  man,  and  had,  no  doubt,  some  of  those 
bachelor  adventures  which  he  related  and  diversified 
later.     Every  one  agrees  in  saying  that   he   had   an 


ALAIN  RENE  LE  SAGE. 
From  the  engraving  by  Leloir. 


Xe  Sage,  79 

agreeable  countenance,  an  imposing  figure,  and  had 
been  a  very  handsome  man  in  his  youth.  There  was 
talk  of  an  early  gallant  intimacy  with  a  woman  of 
rank.  In  any  case,  this  life  of  mere  worldliness  was 
short,  for  we  find  him,  at  twenty-six  years  of  age, 
marrying  the  daughter  of  a  Parisian  bourgeois^  who 
was  herself  only  twenty-two.  From  this  time  forth 
he  led  a  domestic  life,  and  one  of  labour  and  restraint. 
It  was  from  the  rue  du  Coeur-Volant,  faubourg  Saint- 
Germain,  later  from  the  rue  Montmartre,  or  from  other 
obscure  homes  where  he  lived,  that  those  charming 
writings,  which  seem  the  mirror  of  the  world,  came 
forth. 

Yet  it  appears  that  immediately  after  his  marriage  he 
tried  to  support  himself  by  regular  employment,  and 
that  he  was  for  a  while  in  provincial  finance,  as  clerk 
to  some  farmer-general.  He  stayed  but  a  short  time, 
and  brought  back  a  horror  of  and  contempt  for  such 
contractors,  whom  he  afterwards  stigmatised  on  every 
occasion.  The  habitual  character  of  Le  Sage's  satire  is 
gay,  light-hearted,  and  pungent  without  bitterness; 
but  whenever  any  question  of  contractors,  of  Turca- 
rets,  comes  up,  he  sharpens  his  blade  and  drives  it  in 
without  pity,  as  if  he  had  reprisals  to  make.  I  notice 
the  same  thing  in  whatever  concerns  actors,  of  whom 
he  had  had  to  complain.  These  are  the  only  two 
classes  whom  the  amiable  satirist  attacks  vivaciously, 
and  almost  savagely — he  whose  satire  is,  in  general, 
tempered  by  good-humour  and  kindliness. 


8o  xc  Saoe. 

On  becoming  a  man  of  Letters,  Le  Sage  met  wkh  a 
protector  and  useful  counsellor  in  the  Abbe  de  Lyonne, 
one  of  the  sons  of  that  able  minister  of  State  under 
Louis  XIV,  Hughes  de  Lyonne,  The  abbe  knew  the 
Spanish  language  and  literature  at  a  period  when 
they  were  ceasing  to  be  known  in  France;  and  he 
drew  from  them  as  from  a  mine,  still  rich,  which  was 
beginning  to  be  forgotten.  Let  us  here  form  a  just 
idea  of  Le  Sage,  exaggerating  nothing  in  order  to 
better  appreciate  his  charming  genius.  Le  Sage  pro- 
ceeded much  as  do  the  authors  of  the  present  time, 
and  of  nearly  all  times.  He  wrote  day  by  day,  volume 
after  volume;  taking  his  subjects  where  he  could  and 
whenever  they  offered  themselves  fittingly.  He 
worked  his  trade.  But  he  did  it  naturally,  with  fa- 
cility, with  a  gift  for  narrative  and  a  dramatic  sense 
(his  essential  talent),  with  a  vein  of  satire  and  comedy 
running  through  it  all,  and  with  a  lively,  gay,  and 
easy  morality,  which  was  his  personal  manner  of  feel- 
ing and  thinking.  After  a  few  rather  unfortunate 
attempts  at  translation  and  imitation,  he  gained  his 
first  two  successes  in  the  year  1707,  with  the  pretty 
comedy  oi  Crispin,  le  rival  de  son  maitre,  and  Le  Diable 
boiteux. 

Le  Diable  boiteux,  so  far  as  title,  framework,  and 
personages  go,  is  taken  from  the  Spanish,  but  Le  Sage 
brought  the  whole  into  the  Parisian  point  of  view;  he 
knew  our  measure;  he  handled  his  original  as  he 
pleased,  easily,  appropriately;   he  scattered  allusions 


Xe  Sage,  Si 

throughout  to  suit  French  taste;  he  fused  what  he 
borrowed  and  what  he  added  into  a  most  amusing 
picture  of  manners  and  morals,  which  seemed  both 
new  and  easy,  unexpected  but  recognisable.  This 
book  is  one  that  Le  Sage  remade  and  made  over 
again  in  a  hundred  ways  in  after  years,  under  one 
form  or  another;  it  is  a  picture  of  the  whole  of  human 
life,  a  lively  review  of  all  conditions,  with  the  in- 
trigues, the  vices,  and  the  absurdities,  that  charac- 
terise every  one.  We  should  picture  to  ourselves,  the 
state  of  men's  mind  at  the  time  Le  Diable  hoiteux  ap- 
peared— that  gloomy,  wearied,  calamitous  old  age  of 
Louis  XIV,  burdened  with  enforced  reverence  and 
devotion  which  weighed  so  heavily  upon  every  one, 
and  with  that  decorum  which  had  now  become  a 
torment  and  a  constraint.  Suddenly,  Asmodeus  came 
and  perched  with  his  pupil  on  the  roof  of  a  tower, 
let  us  say  it  was  a  tower  of  Notre-Dame;  thence, 
by  a  turn  of  his  hand,  he  lifted  all  the  roofs  of  the 
city,  and  men  saw  all  hypocrisies,  all  shams  laid  bare, 
in  short,  the  secret  side  of  humanity.  The  panorama 
lay  there  in  broad  daylight.  Asmodeus  had  a  wild  suc- 
cess; they  did  not  give  him  time  to  clothe  himself,  said 
the  critics  of  that  day;  people  came  post-haste  to  get 
the  pamphlet.  Two  editions  were  issued  in  one  year: 
"  They  are  working  at  a  third,"  announced  \h.t  Jour- 
nal  de  Verdun  (December,  1707);  "two  seigneurs  of 
the  Court  fought,  sword  in  hand,  in  Barbin's  shop,  to 
get  the  last  copy  of  the  second  edition." 

VOL.  I. — 6. 


82  Xe  Saae, 

Boileau,  one  day  when  Jean-Baptiste  Rousseau  was 
with  him,  detected  Le  Diable  boiteux  in  the  hands  of 
his  little  lacquey,  and  threatened  to  dismiss  him  if  the 
book  remained  in  the  house.  There  is  a  success  in- 
deed! consecrated  and  enlivened  by  the  wrath  of 
Boileau. 

For  a  little  lacquey  the  book  may  not  be  very  moral; 
certainly  it  does  not  preach  the  morality  of  the  Cate- 
chism; it  is  that  of  practical  life,  namely:  to  be  the 
dupe  of  nothing  and  of  no  one.  We  may  say  of  Le 
Diable  boiteux  as  was  said,  so  wisely,  of  Gil  Bias: 
"This  book  is  moral  like  experience."  Dating  from 
this  first  work,  Le  Sage's  character  is  clearly  exhibited; 
he  is  La  Bruyere  on  the  stage  and  in  action,  without  a 
trace  of  effort.  Le  Diable  boiteux  is  a  good  predeces- 
sor to  the  Lettres  Persanes,  but  it  precedes  them  with 
a  light  step,  without  the  slightest  pretention  to  la- 
boured wit,  and  without  fatigue.  There  is  not  the 
shadow  of  mannerism  about  Le  Sage;  his  shafts  are 
lively,  pungent  words  that  escape  him  as  he  flies 
along.  Thus  Asmodeus,  speaking  of  a  brother-demon 
with  whom  he  had  quarrelled,  remarks:  "We  em- 
braced, and  since  then  we  are  mortal  enemies." 

Nothing  could  be  gayer  or  more  amusing  than  the 
little  comedy  of  Crispin,  le  rival  de  son  mattre.  One 
of  the  first  scenes  between  the  two  valets,  Crispin  and 
La  Branche,  offers  an  example  of  that  light-hearted 
volatility  in  the  comic,  which  is  the  peculiar  charac- 
ter of  Le  Sage,  whether  in  his  plays  or  in  his  novels. 


Xe  Sage»  83 

The  two  valets,  meeting  again,  tell  each  other  their 
adventures:  both  had  been  utter  rascals  in  earlier 
days,  but  they  think  they  have  cured  themselves  of 
that  rascality  by  again  taking  service.  La  Branche, 
especially,  flatters  himself  that  he  is  in  the  right  way; 
he  serves  a  young  man  named  Damis:  "He  is  an 
amiable  fellow,"  says  La  Branche,  "he  likes  play, 
wine,  and  women;  he  is  a  man  for  everything.  We 
keep  up  all  sorts  of  debauchery  together.  It  amuses 
me;  and  prevents  me  from  doing  wrong."  "What 
an  innocent  life!"  remarks  Crispin.  For  my  part, 
I  say,  what  excellent  and  guileless  comedy  that 
shows  us  vice  so  artlessly !  This  play  of  Crispin  be- 
gins the  attack  on  financiers :  we  see  Turcaret  loom- 
ing up  in  the  distance.  Crispin  tells  himself  that  he 
is  tired  of  being  a  valet:  "Ah!  Crispin,"  he  says, 
"it  is  your  own  fault!  You  have  always  gone  after 
trifles — you  ought  to  have  shone  in  finance.  .  .  . 
With  my  wit  and  cleverness,  morbleii!  1  ought  al- 
ready to  have  gone  more  than  once  into  bankruptcy." 
And  the  last  touch  of  all  seems  like  a  transition  to  the 
coming  comedy,  when  Oronte  says  to  the  two  valets: 
"  You  have  intelligence,  but  you  ought  to  make  better 
use  of  it,  and,  to  make  you  honest  men,  1  will  put  you 
both  into  business." 

Le  Sage  had  the  luck  of  opportuneness;  he  divined 
and  slightly  preceded  the  moment  when,  at  the  death 
of  Louis  XIV,  the  orgy  of  financiers  and  parvenus  be- 
gan.     Turcaret  was  played  in  1709;  the  absurdities 


84  Xe  Sage, 

and  turpitudes  that  displayed  themselves  on  the  tri- 
umph of  Law's  system  are  scathed  in  advance  in 
that  play.  The  comedy  denounces  and  precedes  the 
explosion  of  vice  and  absurdity;  it  might  then  have 
been  preventive,  if  warnings  ever  can  be.  Turcarei 
is  both  a  comedy  of  character  and  a  page  in  the  his- 
tory of  morals,  like  Tartuffe.  Moliere  wrote  Tartu ffe 
several  years  before  the  real  Tartuffe  triumphed  under 
Louis  XIV.  Le  Sage  wrote  Turcarei  several  years 
before  Turcaret  was  on  a  pinnacle  during  the  Regency. 
But,  like  many  other  vices  of  the  Regency,  the  real 
Turcaret  came  from  beneath  the  surface  of  the  last 
years  of  Louis  XIV.  All  sorts  of  difficulties  were 
raised  against  the  representation ;  it  required  the  king's 
son  to  remove  them.  Turcaret  was  played  "  by  order 
of  Monseigneur,"  to  whom  we  ought  to  be  grateful 
for  this  mark  of  favour  to  literature,  the  only  one  he 
ever  gave. 

Great  as  was  the  need  of  protectors  against  the 
cabal  of  offended  financiers  and  jealous  authors,  Le 
Sage  held  firm,  and  did  not  permit  himself  to  give  way 
to  any  base  compliance.  Here  the  Breton  in  his 
nature  asserts  itself.  Before  the  play  was  acted  he 
had  promised  the  Duchesse  de  Bouillon  to  go  and  read 
it  to  her.  She  expected  that  the  reading  would  take 
place  before  dinner;  certain  matters  detained  Le  Sage, 
and  he  was  late  in  arriving.  When  he  appeared,  the 
duchess  told  him  stiffly  that  he  had  made  her  lose 
more  than  an  hour  waiting  for  him.      "Very  well, 


Xe  Saae,  85 

madame,"  he  answered,  coldly,  "I  will  let  you  gain 
two."  And,  making  his  bow,  he  departed.  Colle, 
who  relates  the  anecdote,  knew  it  on  good  authority, 
and  applauds  it  like  a  man  who  was  of  a  somewhat 
similar  nature. 

Aside  from  this  comedy,  which  was  of  the  nature 
of  a  pitched  battle  in  which  Le  Sage,  spurring  to  the 
charge,  resolved  to  make  vice  hateful,  satire  in  him 
and  in  all  his  other  writings  keeps  its  amiable  as  well 
as  amusing  character;  and  it  is  this  combination  that 
makes  the  charm  and  originality  of  his  writings.  Such, 
above  all,  is  the  character  of  his  novel  Gil  Bias,  that 
delightful  and  varied  masterpiece,  with  which  his 
name  is  for  ever  associated. 

Gil  Bias  was  published,  successively,  in  four  volumes, 
the  last  two  of  which  followed  the  first  after  rather  long 
intervals.  The  first  two  appeared  in  171 5,  the  year  of 
the  death  of  Louis  XIV.  A  freshness  of  youth,  a  free- 
dom of  movement  were  in  them  that  suited  well  with 
the  beginnings  of  an  emancipated  epoch.  What  can 
I  say  of  Gil  Bias  that  has  not  already  been  said,  al- 
ready been  felt  and  expressed  by  many  clever  pane- 
gyrists, many  delicate  and  acute  critics,  and  that  all 
judicious  readers  have  not  thought  for  themselves  "?  I 
must  content  myself  by  humbly  saying  and  repeating 
it  all  once  more. 

The  author,  in  this  lengthy,  developed,  and  easy  nar- 
rative, intended  to  depict  human  life  as  it  is;  with  its 
varieties  and  its  adventures,  with  the  whimsicalities 


86  %c  Sage. 

that  the  play  of  fate  and  fortune  produce,  and,  above 
all,  with  those  introduced  by  the  varieties  of  our 
tempers,  our  tastes,  and  our  defects.  Gil  Bias  is  a 
man  of  very  humble  and  common  birth,  of  the  lowest 
bourgeoisie;  he  early  shows  himself  a  wide-awake, 
clever,  and  good-natured  lad;  he  has  some  education, 
such  as  it  is,  and  he  leaves  his  home  at  seventeen  years 
of  age  to  make  his  way  in  the  world.  He  passes,  in 
turn,  through  all  conditions,  even  the  lowest  and 
most  vulgar;  he  is  not  much  displeased  with  any 
of  them,  although  he  is  always  seeking  to  push 
on  and  to  advance  himself.  Gil  Bias  at  bottom  is 
frank  and  fairly  honest,  credulous,  vain,  and  easily 
taken  in.  Deceived  at  first  in  all  ways — by  a  parasite 
whom  he  happens  to  meet  who  praises  him,  by  a 
valet  who  plays  the  saint,  and  by  women — he  is  the 
dupe  of  his  bad  and  sometimes  of  his  good  qualities. 
He  gets  his  schooling  in  all  directions,  and  we  make 
our  apprenticeship  with  him.  Excellent  subject  for 
practical  morals,  it  may  be  said  of  Gil  Bias  that  he 
lets  himself  be  made  by  things ;  he  never  goes  ahead 
of  experience;  he  receives  it.  He  is  not  a  man  of 
genius,  of  great  talent;  nor  is  he  anything  very  extra- 
ordinary: his  mind  is  healthy  and  shrewd,  facile  and 
active,  essentially  teachable,  having  all  sorts  of  apti- 
tudes in  it.  The  only  question  is  to  apply  them  pro- 
perly; and  that  he  ends  by  doing;  he  makes  himself 
capable  of  everything,  and  he  deserves  the  praise 
given  him  by  his  friend  Fabrice:     "You  have  the 


%c  Saae.  87 

universal  tool."  But  he  does  not  deserve  it  until 
near  the  end,  and  that  encourages  us;  we  feel,  in 
reading  him,  that  we,  also,  without  too  much  effort 
or  presumption,  can  succeed  some  day  as  well  as  he. 
AH  forms  of  life  and  of  human  nature  will  be  found 
in  Gil  Bias  —  all,  except  a  certain  ideal  and  moral 
elevation,  which  is  rare,  no  doubt,  and  often  simu- 
lated, but  which  is  found  too  real  in  some  instances 
to  allow  it  to  be  wholly  omitted  in  a  complete  pict- 
ure of  humanity.  Le  Sage,  worthy  man  in  other 
ways,  had  not  that  ideal  within  himself.  He  was  of 
the  opinion  that  "the  most  perfect  productions  of  the 
mind  are  those  in  which  there  are  but  slight  defects, 
just  as  the  most  honourable  men  are  those  who  have 
fewest  vices."  There  is  nothing  more  true  than  that 
remark,  and  in  Gil  Bias,  the  author  has  amply  made 
use  of  that  method  of  looking  at  things  that  bestows 
some  small  vices  on  the  best  of  men.  Gil  Bias  him- 
self, though  he  has  no  very  clearly  defined  innate 
vice,  is  very  capable  of  acquiring  nearly  all  kinds  at 
the  first  encounter.  He  is,  as  1  have  said,  an  honest 
man  in  himself,  generally  preferring  good  to  evil,  but 
readily  letting  himself  go  when  occasion,  vanity,  or 
self-interest  tempts  him,  and  not  blushing  too  much 
for  his  conduct,  even  when  it  is  past.  I  know  the 
allowance  to  be  made  in  such  a  case  for  the  gaiety  of 
the  novel,  for  the  habits  of  the  class,  and  also  for  the 
easy  morality  of  a  period  when  people  pardoned  the 
rascalities  of  the  Chevalier  Des  Grieux,  and  laughed 


88  %z  Sage. 

at  those  of  the  Chevalier  de  Grammont.  Neverthe- 
less, we  cannot  conceal  from  ourselves  that  it  is 
doubtless  in  order  to  keep  him  on  the  level  of 
human  nature  that  Gil  Bias  has  not  a  loftier  soul: 
he  is  kind  to  all,  moderately  scrupulous  according  to 
circumstances,  valet  before  he  was  master,  and  more 
or  less  of  the  race  of  the  Figaros. 

Le  Sage  had  thoroughly  observed  one  fact,  which 
other  moralists  have  also  noticed,  namely:  the  quali- 
ties that  are,  perhaps,  most  characteristic  of  men 
taken  in  the  mass,  and  most  fitted  to  astonish  those 
who  think  they  know  them  best,  are  not  their 
wickedness  and  their  folly  (into  which  they  only  fall 
by  fits  and  starts) :  the  qualities  that  are  most  amaz- 
ing in  men,  and  most  inexhaustible,  are  their  base- 
ness and  their  dulness.  The  author  of  G/l  Bias 
knew  this  well  :  his  personage,  in  order  to  remain  a 
natural  and  medium  type,  could  not,  in  any  degree, 
be  raised  to  the  plane  of  a  stoic  or  a  hero.  He  re- 
presents nothing  that  is  peculiar,  or  unique,  or  even 
rare.  Gil  Bias  is  you,  is  I,  is  every  one.  To  this 
conformity  of  nature  with  us,  to  his  happy  frankness, 
to  his  ingenuous  sallies  and  confessions,  he  owes  the 
fact  that  he  remains,  in  spite  of  his  vices,  ever  inter- 
esting and  amiable  in  the  eyes  of  the  reader.  As  to 
respect,  as  some  one  has  wittily  said,  that  is  the 
last  thing  he  asks  of  us. 

The  names  of  Panurge  and  Figaro  are  often  men- 
tioned  in   connection  with   that   of  Gil   Bias.      But 


Panurge,  that  most  subtle  and  sagacious  creation  of 
the  genius  of  Rabelais,  is  peculiar  in  quite  a  different 
way  from  Gil  Bias;  he  is  an  original  of  another 
quality,  gifted  with  a  fantasticality  of  his  own,  a  vein 
both  poetic  and  grotesque.  In  representing  certain 
sides  of  human  nature  Panurge  exaggerates  and 
caricatures  them  intentionally  in  a  laughable  manner. 
Figaro,  who  is  more  of  the  lineage  of  Gil  Bias,  also 
has  a  warmth,  a  natural  gaiety,  a  brio  which  has 
something  of  the  lyric  in  it.  Gil  Bias  is  more  even, 
more  in  the  habitual  tone  of  us  all.  He  is  we,  our- 
selves, I  say  again,  passing  through  all  those  diverse 
conditions  and  periods. 

The  most  competent  judge  of  such  matters,  Walter 
Scott,  said  of  Gil  Bias:  "This  work  leaves  the 
reader  content  with  himself  and  with  mankind." 
Certainly,  that  is  a  result  which  might  seem  difficult 
to  obtain  by  a  satirist  who  makes  no  pretence  of  em- 
bellishing humanity;  but  neither  does  he  seek  to 
calumniate  nor  disfigure  it;  he  contents  himself  with 
showing  it  such  as  it  is;  and  always  with  a  natural 
air  and  a  diverting  tone.  Irony,  with  Le  Sage,  has 
no  acrimony,  as  it  has  with  Voltaire.  If  it  has  not 
the  air  of  the  great  world,  and  the  supreme  distinc- 
tion which  is  Hamilton's  sign-manual,  neither  has 
it  the  affected  refinements  of  causticity  and  barren 
feeling.  It  is  an  irony  that  bears  witness  to  a  healthy 
soul,  an  irony  which  remains,  if  one  may  say  so, 
good-natured.     It  speeds  along,   finds  and  flings  its 


9°  Xe  Saae. 

mischievous  shaft,  and  still  flies  on,  not  pressing  it  in. 
I  insist  on  this  absence  of  bitterness,  which  consti- 
tutes the  originality  of  Le  Sage  and  his  distinction  as 
a  satirist;  that  is  why  he  consoles  even  while  ridicul- 
ing. In  this  characteristic,  above  all,  he  is  different 
from  Voltaire,  who  laughs  and  bites  in  bitter  fashion. 
Remember  Candide.  Pangloss  may  be  a  cousin, 
but  he  is  not  the  brother  of  Gil  Bias. 

It  is  very  noticeable  how  works  that  please  and  suc- 
ceed the  best  in  styles  not  classified  are  sometimes 
slow  in  obtaining  a  just  estimation;  I  mean  the  estima- 
tion that  is  written  and  published  in  serious  works. 
Le  Sage's  reputation  with  the  public  was  made  and  es- 
tablished a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  while  the  praise  to 
which  he  was  entitled,  and  which  filled  every  mouth, 
was  still  dealt  out  to  him  with  a  sort  of  parsimony  by 
the  principal  authors  of  the  period.  It  seemed  that  in 
their  dignity  they  chose  to  look  twice  before  saying 
all  the  good  that  they  really  thought  of  the  best  of  our 
novels.  The  Abbe  des  Fontaines,  it  is  true,  as  a  good 
journalist,  praised  Le  Sage  for  "so  many  ingenious 
tales."  Voltaire,  in  the  list  of  writers  which  he  gives 
in  his  Siecle  de  Louis  Xiy,  confines  himself,  under  the 
head  of  "  Le  Sage  "  to  a  few  lines;  as  follows: 

"  Le  Sage,  born  at  Vannes,  in  Lower  Brittany  in 
1668.  His  novel  of  Gil  Bias  still  lives  because  there  is 
nature  in  it;  it  is  taken  entirely  from  a  Spanish  novel, 
entitled :  La  vida  del  escudero  don  Marcos  de  Obrego. 
Died  in  1747." 


Xe  Sage.  91 

Voltaire's  assertion  is  incorrect,  and  his  eulogy  re- 
duced to  a  minimum.  We  could  scarcely  understand 
this  severity  and  malevolence,  if  we  had  not  read  the 
chapter  in  which  Gil  Bias,  during  his  stay  at  Valence, 
sees  acted  a  new  tragedy  by  the  ''fashionable  poet," 
Don  Gabriel  Triaquero.  This  incident,  wholly  satir- 
ical, is  pointed  at  Voltaire,  who  is  evidently  Don 
Gabriel.  Le  Sage  was  a  classic  of  the  preceding  cent- 
ury, and  not  favourable  to  innovations;  probably  he 
had  met  the  young  author  of  "CEdipus"  in  the  first 
intoxication  of  success,  and  being,  himself,  the  most 
simple  of  men  of  intellect,  he  may  have  thought  him 
rather  a  coxcomb  and  not  enough  of  a  good  fellow. 
Voltaire,  in  turn,  finding  Le  Sage  on  his  path,  took 
his  revenge  for  the  satire  by  faint  praise  and  a  false 
assertion.  By  those  who  surrounded  Voltaire  little 
praise  could  be  given  to  Le  Sage.  Marmontel,  in  his 
"Essay  on  Novels,"  speaks  of  him  with  a  sort  of 
regret,  and  incidentally,  as  it  were;  the  passage  is 
remarkable  for  its  insufficiency : — 

"  The  satirical  novel  such  as  I  conceive  it,"  he  says,  "  requires  some- 
times the  pen  of  Lucian,  La  Bruyere,  or  Hamilton,  sometimes  that  of 
Juvenal,  I  dare  not  say  that  of  Moliere:  that  of  Le  Sage  might  have 
sufficed  with  a  more  learned  study  of  manners  and  customs,  and 
a  more  familiar  and  intimate  knowledge  of  a  certain  class  of  society 
which  the  author  of  Gil  Bias  had  not  sufficiently  observed,  and  only 
saw  from  a  distance." 

We  may  here  remark  the  implied  reproach  to  Le 
Sage  of  not  seeing  good  company.     To  us,  at  this 


92  Xe  Sage. 

distance,  that  reproach  disappears.     Gil  Bias  to  our 
eyes  is  not  a  man  of  society,  he  is  man  himself. 

La  Harpe,  a  good  critic  when  he  speaks  of  what  he 
knows  and  does  not  let  himself  be  confused  by  pas- 
sion, is  the  first  writer  who  adequately  appreciated 
Gil  Bias.  The  page  he  devotes  to  him  is  worthy  of 
Le  Sage  himself  for  its  ease  and  lightness  of  touch: — 


"  Gil  Bias,"  he  says,  "is  a  masterpiece  ;  it  belongs  to  the  small 
number  of  volumes  that  we  re-read  with  pleasure  ;  it  is  a  moral  and 
living  picture  of  human  life;  all  conditions  are  brought  into  it  to  give 
or  receive  a  lesson.  But  the  instruction  is  never  without  charm. 
Utile  dulci  should  be  the  motto  of  this  excellent  book,  which  is  sea- 
soned throughout  with  good  jesting.  Many  of  its  witticisms  have 
passed  into  proverbs.  .  .  .  We  know  the  personages  of  Gil  Blasj 
we  have  lived  with  them ;  we  meet  them  at  every  moment.  Why  ? 
Because  in  the  picture  made  of  them  there  is  not  a  line  drawn  without 
intention  and  without  effect.  Le  Sage  had  much  intellect,  but  he  de- 
votes so  much  talent  to  concealing  it,  he  likes  so  much  to  hide  behind 
his  characters,  he  is  so  little  concerned  about  himself,  that  we  must 
have  good  eyes  to  see  the  author  in  his  work  and  duly  appreciate 
them  both." 


Justice  at  last  was  done  to  Le  Sage.  After  this, 
critics  were  not  even  content  merely  to  say  of  him 
with  the  Abbe  de  Voisenon  and  with  the  public:  "  He 
wrote  Gil  Bias,  a  novel  which,  for  lightness  and 
purity  of  style  and  the  shrewdness  of  its  moral,  will 
for  ever  remain  a  precious  monument  in  French  litera- 
ture." They  began  to  explain  why  Gil  Bias  was  a 
monument  and  a  masterpiece.  All  tastes,  of  course, 
did  not  agree.  They  never  do.  Enthusiasts  by  nature, 
like  Diderot,  grew  heated  over  Clarissa ;  the  idealists 


%c  Sage.  93 

and  the  passionate  lovers  clung  to  the  novels  of  Jean- 
Jacques  and  Mme.  de  Stael.  The  French  Academy, 
however,  which  owed  reparation  to  Le  Sage  for  not 
having  had  the  honour  to  possess  him,  proposed  his 
Eulogy,  and  divided  its  prize,  in  1822,  between  two 
discourses  upon  him,  remarkable  in  different  ways, 
one  by  M.  Patin  and  the  other  by  M.  Malitourne.  I 
cite  part  of  the  first  and,  as  I  think,  the  more  solid. 
In  it,  Gil  Bias  is  admirably  characterised;  criticism  has 
advanced  a  step  since  the  days  of  La  Harpe;  it  has 
reached  the  point  of  delicate  detail  of  analysis  and 
literary  anatomy. 

"  Le  Diable  boiteux  was  succeeded  by  Gil  Bias  which  is  much  supe- 
rior. Between  the  two  works  there  is  almost  as  great  a  distance  as 
that  which  separates  the  paintings  of  moralists  from  those  of  romance 
writers.  The  subject  is  the  same  in  both,  but  it  is  differently  pre- 
sented ;  in  one,  observation  takes  the  form  of  lively  and  witty  expres- 
sion ;  in  the  other  it  is  wholly  dramatic  :  the  first  gives  us  a  gallery 
of  portraits  ;  the  second,  a  stage  and  the  actors  thereon.  It  is  in  the 
latter,  above  all,  that  Le  Sage  shows  his  power  of  animating  his 
figures,  and  of  giving  them  the  appearance  of  life.  ...  I  do 
not  know  if  Le  Sage  himself  was  tricked  by  his  art  ;  but  is  there  a  sin- 
gle one  of  his  readers  who  has  not,  at  some  time,  taken  for  reality  the 
picture  that  he  made  for  us  in  Gil  Bias  ?  His  personages  were  known 
to  us  before  he  showed  them  to  us;  since  then,  we  have  met  them 
often  in  the  world.  We  are  tempted  to  say  to  him  what  a  comic 
poet  said  to  a  critic  of  antiquity  :  '  O  life,  and  thou,  Menander,  which 
of  you  two  imitated  the  other  ? '  .  .  .  Such  is  the  history  of 
Gil  Bias  :  is  it  not  our  own,  and  that  of  the  majority  ?  Is  it  not  life 
itself,  such  as  fate  and  human  passions,  in  spite  of  reason,  have  made 
it?" 

But  the  judgment  of  authority,  that  which  ought  to 
count  the  most  and  will  last,  is  that  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 


94  Xe  Sage* 

the  reviver  of  genre.  That  lovable  genius,  so  frank, 
so  benevolent,  so  free  from  envy,  having  to  speak  of 
Le  Sage  in  his  "  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Eminent 
Novelists,"  does  so  with  a  fulness  of  heart,  a  sympa- 
thetic intelligence  such  as  one  might  expect  from  his 
fraternal  soul : 

"  Few  have  ever  read  this  charming  book,"  he  says  of  Gil  Bias, 
"  without  remembering,  as  one  of  the  most  delightful  occupations 
of  their  life,  the  time  which  they  first  employed  in  the  perusal;  and 
there  are  few  also  who  do  not  occasionally  turn  back  to  its  pages  with 
all  the  vivacity  which  attends  the  recollection  of  early  love.  It  sig- 
nifies nothing  at  what  time  we  have  first  encountered  the  fasci- 
nation, whether  in  boyhood,  when  we  were  chiefly  captivated  by  the 
cavern  of  the  robbers,  and  other  scenes  of  romance;  whether  in  more 
advanced  youth,  but  while  our  ignorance  of  the  world  yet  concealed 
from  us  the  subtle  and  poignant  satire  which  lurks  in  so  many  passages 
of  the  work;  whether  we  were  learned  enough  to  apprehend  the  va- 
rious allusions  to  history  and  public  matters  with  which  it  abounds, 
or  ignorant  enough  to  rest  contented  with  the  more  direct  course  of 
the  narration.  The  power  of  the  enchanter  over  us  is  alike  absolute, 
under  all  these  circumstances. 

The  whole  concoction  of  Gil  Bias  appears  to  me  as  original,  in 
that  which  constitutes  the  essence  of  a  composition,  as  it  is  inex- 
pressibly delightful.  .  .  .  It  is  a  work  which  renders  the  reader 
pleased  with  himself  and  with  mankind,  where  faults  are  placed  be- 
fore him  in  the  light  of  follies  rather  than  vices,  and  where  misfortunes 
are  so  interwoven  with  the  ludicrous,  that  we  laugh  in  the  very  act 
of  sympathising  with  them.  All  is  rendered  diverting — both  the 
crimes  and  the  retribution  which  follows  them.  ...  In  short, 
so  strictly  are  the  pages  of  Gil  Bias  confined  to  what  is  amusing  that 
they  might  perhaps  have  been  improved  by  some  touches  of  a  more 
masculine,  stronger,  and  firmer  line  of  morality." 

The  master  has  spoken.  The  judgment  is  given 
with  length  and  fulness.  The  regret  at  the  end  for 
the  absence  of  a  sterner  morality  seems  to  me  a  slight 


%c  Saae.  95 

concession  made  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  the  English 
public  and  to  Anglican  prejudice.  Gil  Bias  could  not 
have  introduced  a  sterner  and  more  virile  morality 
without  ceasing  to  be  himself. 

M.  Villemain,  in  his  Tableau  du  Xl^IIIe  Siecle,  speaks 
of  Le  Sage  as  he  well  knows  how,  and  places  him  in 
the  centre  of  the  circle  of  writers  of  his  literary  day 
and  stripe.  This  clever  chapter  is  more  a  compilation 
of  all  that  has  been  said  upon  Le  Sage  and  Gil  Bias 
than  a  new  testimony  delivered  by  the  elegant  critic. 
It  is  difficult  to  extract  a  complete  judgment  from  this 
series  of  charming  and  fleeting  meanderings.  Dwell- 
ing a  moment  on  the  accusation  of  plagiarism  brought 
against  Le  Sage,  M.  Villemain,  after  refuting  it  in  his 
way,  adds: 

"  It  is  not  that  in  this  affair  we  pretend  to  deny  altogether  the  debt 
to  Spain;  but  that  debt  is  something  other  than  has  been  said.  Our 
Gil  Bias  was  not  stolen,  no  matter  what  Pere  Isla  may  say,  and, 
quite  recently,  Dr.  Llorente.  There  was  no  mysterious  manuscript 
found  by  Le  Sage  and  concealed  from  others.  But  there  is  no  doubt 
that  Le  Sage  skilfully  adopted  the  clever  pleasantry,  the  grave  and 
gentle  philosophy,  malicious  yet  merry,  which  shines  in  Cervantes 
and  Cuevedo,  and  of  which  many  charming  examples  will  always  be 
found  in  the  Spanish  moralists  and  narrators.  To  this  general  and 
free  imitation,  Le  Sage  adds  the  taste  of  the  best  antiquity;  he  is,  as 
to  style,  the  pupil  of  Terence  and  Horace." 

Le  Sage  borrowed  many  other  things  besides  the 
wit  and  the  philosophy  of  the  Spanish  authors;  he  had 
no  scruple  in  making  use  of  their  ideas,  stories,  frag- 
ments, in  fact,  of  anything  that  suited  him,  as  Mr.  Tick- 
nor,   the   American    historian   of  Spanish   literature. 


96  Xe  Sage* 

peremptorily  demonstrates.  There  is  no  author  who 
has  had  less  scruple  in  this  respect,  or  who  has 
acted  with  less  ceremony  than  Le  Sage.  He  justifies 
the  witty  definition  given  one  day  by  M.  de  Maure- 
pas:  ''An  author  who  takes  out  of  books  what 
passes  through  his  head."  All  this  detracts  nothing 
from  the  merits  of  Le  Sage;  but  we  must,  above  all, 
tell  the  truth  and  speak  frankly  on  this  subject  with- 
out national  and  patriotic  commonplaces.  Let  us  not 
be  more  proud  for  him  than  he  was  for  himself.  Gil 
Bias's  sense  of  honour  was  not  high. 

Scenes  of  comedy  are  so  numerous  in  Gil  Bias  that 
they  leave  the  reader  but  little  time  to  perceive  what 
there  is  that  is  common  and  wearisome  in  certain  epi- 
sodes, certain  sentimental  tales  that  the  author  in- 
serted, here  and  there,  to  swell  his  volumes,  and 
which  he  gathered  from  heaven  knows  where.  The 
first  two  volumes  of  the  work,  after  presenting  to  us 
all  sorts  of  classes  and  conditions  of  men,  thieves,  can- 
ons, doctors,  authors,  and  actors,  bring  Gil  Bias  to  be 
intendant,  that  is,  steward  of  Don  Alfonso,  and  de- 
puted to  make  a  restitution  in  his  name.  "  This  was 
beginning  the  business  of  intendant  where  it  ought  to 
end."  The  third  volume,  published  in  1724,  which  is 
the  most  remarkable  of  all,  shows  us  Gil  Bias,  mount- 
ing by  degrees  from  stage  to  stage ;  and  in  proportion 
to  his  rise  the  lessons  may  seem  to  be  sharper  and 
bolder.  But,  even  in  their  boldness,  they  still  keep  a 
sort  of  innocence.     Le  Sage,  even  when  he  jeers,  is 


Xe  Saoe,  97 

never  aggressive;  he  has  no  thought  of  making  any- 
thing triumph.  He  laughs  to  laugh,  to  show  nature 
bare;  he  never  scoffs  at  the  present  for  the  sake  of 
an  idea,  nor  for  the  profit  of  some  future  system.  He 
knows  that  humanity,  in  changing  its  state,  will 
merely  change  the  form  of  its  folly.  Here  he  is 
wholly  out  of  touch  with  the  eighteenth  century,  be- 
longing rather  to  the  good  old  jesters  of  former  times. 

This  third  volume  abounds  in  excellent  tales.  Gil 
Bias,  become  secretary  and  favourite  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Granada,  loses  his  place  in  the  end  through  telling 
the  truth.  All  these  scenes  at  the  archbishop's  palace 
are  admirably  natural,  and  breathe  a  spirit  of  gentle 
comedy  insensibly  mingled  with  all  the  actions  of  life. 
The  self-love  of  authorship  is  painted  in  the  good  old 
man  in  full  relief,  and  in  all  its  beatific  naivete,  yet 
with  a  remnant  of  meekness.  The  scenes  with  the 
actress  Laure,  that  follow  immediately,  are  incompar- 
ably true.  Le  Sage  knew  to  its  depths  the  comic 
type. 

When  he  goes  to  Court,  and  finds  himself  the 
secretary  and  favourite  of  the  Due  de  Lerme,  we 
think  for  a  moment  that  Gil  Bias  will  raise  himself 
into  becoming  a  man  of  honour  in  certain  respects; 
not  at  all:  he  has  to  do  with  dangers  of  another  kind, 
and  he  succumbs.  The  stage  alone  is  changed;  the 
motives,  the  self-interest,  the  passions  are  still  the 
same.  Far  from  improving,  he  sinks,  at  this  moment 
of  intoxication,  to  the  lowest  degree  of  unworthiness 

VOL.  I. — 7. 


98  %c  Sage. 

to  which  he  has  yet  fallen — to  insensibility  of  heart, 
to  repudiation  of  his  family  and  of  his  early  friends. 
The  highest  point  of  his  prosperity  is  precisely  the 
moment  when,  if  he  does  not  take  care,  his  real  de- 
pravity begins.  He  needs  disgrace  to  show  him  to 
himself,  and  to  bring  him  back  within  the  true  line  of 
his  habits  and  his  nature. 

The  fourth  volume  of  Gil  Bias  did  not  appear  till 
1735,  that  is  to  say,  twenty  years  after  the  first  two, 
and  eleven  years  after  the  third.  This  fourth  volume, 
in  which  Gil  Bias  comes  out  of  his  retirement  and  re- 
turns for  a  time  to  Court,  does  not  present  either  the 
same  vicissitudes  or  the  same  rapidity  of  action  as  its 
predecessors;  but  it  does  not  shame  them.  We  find 
in  it  a  sketch  of  the  author's  literary  tastes,  when  he 
shows  us  his  Gil  Bias  in  the  library  of  the  Chateau 
de  Lirias  (a  castle  in  Spain!)  taking  special  pleasure 
in  books  of  cheerful  morality,  and  choosing  as  his 
favourite  authors  Horace,  Lucian,  and  Erasmus. 

The  literary  theory  of  Le  Sage  can  be  fully  extracted 
from  more  than  one  page  of  Gil  Bias,  and  particularly 
from  the  conversations  of  the  latter  with  his  friend, 
the  poet  Fabrice  Nunez.  Fabrice,  in  order  to  succeed, 
has  consulted  the  taste  of  the  times;  he  has  indulged 
in  the  style  of  Gongora,  that  of  far-fetched,  involved 
expressions  —  the  romanticism  of  those  days.  Gil 
Bias  reproves  him,  and  demands  clearness  first  of  all; 
he  desires  that  even  a  sonnet  should  be  perfectly 
intelligible.     His  friend  jeers  at  his  simplicity  and  ex- 


Xe  Sage,  99 

plains  the  modern  theory:  "If  the  sonnet  is  not 
intelligible,  so  much  the  better,  my  friend.  Sonnets, 
odes,  and  other  works  that  need  the  sublime,  can 
never  get  along  with  the  simple  and  natural;  obscur- 
ity is  their  whole  merit;  it  is  enough  if  the  poet  thinks 
he  understands  himself.  .  .  .  We  are  five  or  six 
bold  innovators,  who  have  undertaken  to  change  the 
language  from  white  to  black;  and  we  shall  succeed, 
please  God,  in  spite  of  Cervantes  and  Lope  de  Vega." 
In  writing  this,  we  may  be  sure  that  Le  Sage  had 
in  mind  Fontenelle,  perhaps  Montesquieu,  certainly 
Voltaire,  whom  he  thought  much  too  super-elegant 
and  always  endeavouring  to  improve  on  the  language 
of  Racine,  of  Corneille,  and  their  illustrious  prede- 
cessors. 

Boileau,  as  we  know,  did  not  smile  upon  the  open- 
ing career  of  Le  Sage.  In  his  turn,  Le  Sage  seems  to 
have  been  little  favourable  to  what  is  called  the  grand 
and  lofty  literature  of  his  time,  which  he  thought, 
stilted.  This  sort  of  dissenting  opinion,  carried  some- 
times to  aversion,  is  visible  in  all  the  acts  of  his  liter- 
ary life.  He  quarrels  early  with  the  Comedie-Fran^aise, 
and  makes  open  war  upon  it,  and  upon  the  actors  of 
the  king,  who  represent  the  grand  style  and  tragic 
declamation.  He  devotes  his  attention  to  the  little 
theatres,  and  himself,  or  with  others,  writes,  a  hundred 
little  plays  which  represent  in  the  germ,  or  even  to 
the  full,  wha*-  to-day  are  vaudevilles,  comic  operas, 
and  our  pieces  at  the  VarieUs  and  on  the  boulevards. 


loo  %c  Sage. 

He  did  not  choose  to  belong  to  the  French  Academy. 
He  resisted  Danchet,  his  friend,  who  tried  to  entice  him 
there;  he  absolutely  refused  to  solicit  votes,  which 
proceeding  was  at  that  time  necessary  for  election. 
He  had  aversion  to  "  bureaus  of  intellect,"  such  as  the 
salon  of  the  Marquise  de  Lambert;  and,  without  men- 
tioning his  deafness,  which  embarassed  him,  he  gives 
his  reasons  for  this  dislike.  "  In  those  companies  they 
consider  the  best  comedy  or  the  gayest  and  cleverest 
comedy,"  he  remarks  (not  without  a  little  thought  of 
his  own),  "  as  a  feeble  production  that  deserves  no 
praise;  whereas  the  slightest  'serious  '  work,  an  ode, 
an  eclogue,  a  sonnet,  is  welcomed  as  the  greatest 
effort  of  the  human  mind."  He  is  positively  opposed 
to  makers  of  odes  and  tragedies,  and  to  all  solemn  and 
official  styles,  those  "crowned"  styles,  which  the  public 
respects  and  honours  from  etiquette  without  seeing  that 
there  is  often  infinitely  more  talent  and  intellect  dis- 
pensed elsewhere.  The  authors  of  odes  and  tragedies 
paid  him  back  in  the  same  coin ;  Jean-Baptiste  Rousseau 
exceeded  all  limits  when  he  wrote  to  Brossette:  "The 
author  of  Le  Diable  boiteux  would  do  well  to  go  into 
partnership  with  rope-dancers;  his  genius  would 
then  be  in  its  true  sphere.  Gilles  and  Fagotin  would 
have  a  good  master;  Apollo  has  a  bad  scholar."  Vol- 
taire had  better  wit  than  to  refuse  praise  to  Gil  Bias, 
but  he  praises  the  work  as  little  as  possible.  Judging 
by  the  two  lines  he  bestows  reluctantly  upon  it, 
he  seems  never  to  have  suspected  that  it  would  soon 


Xe  Sage,  loi 

be  infinitely  more  glorious  to  have  written  that  novel 
than  the  poem  of  the  Henriade. 

Le  Sage  was  a  practical  philosopher;  he  early  pre- 
ferred to  follow  his  inclinations  and  obey  his  tastes 
rather  than  constrain  himself.  Man  of  genius,  but 
independent  by  nature,  he  knew  how,  for  the  sake  of 
his  liberty,  to  renounce  one  part  of  that  "considera- 
tion "  he  might  so  easily  have  conciliated.  "  We  are 
valued  in  this  world  only  at  the  value  we  choose  to 
put  upon  ourselves,"  says  La  Bruyere.  Le  Sage  knew 
that;  but,  in  order  to  appear  to  every  one  just  what  he 
was,  he  never  consented  to  pose  before  their  eyes. 
He  had  too  much  contempt  for  the  way  men  seek  to 
make  others  believe  in  them.  In  his  hatred  of  the 
solemn  and  the  false  he  would  have  thrown  himself, 
rather,  on  the  side  of  the  vulgar  and  the  common.  He 
prefers  to  haunt  cafes  rather  than  salons.  He  seems 
to  have  applied  to  himself  that  saying  of  an  old  classic : 
Plebeius  moriar  senex  !  May  I  return  in  old  age  to  the 
obscure  ranks  from  which,  for  a  moment,  1  came!  He 
plunged  back  with  pleasure  into  the  crowd,  always 
finding  new  matter  there  for  observation.  He  worked 
for  the  open-air  theatres,  and  strewed  his  wit  by  the 
handful  on  the  stages  of  the  mountebanks;  he  had 
many  successes  not  reputed  creditable.  I  have  just 
read  his  Foire  des  Fees,  and  his  Monde  renversee,  and 
very  pretty  farces  they  are,  truly.  This  vein,  and  this 
vogue  of  Le  Sage  as  a  vaudevillist  deserve  study,  for, 
let  us  remark,  it  was  not  the  necessity  of  a  livelihood, 


I02  Xe  Saoc» 

only,  that  turned  him  in  that  direction:  the  attraction 
and  the  vocation  for  it  were  in  him.  He  did  not  deem 
it  derogatory  to  write  a  part  for  Harlequin;  he  even  de- 
scended, on  one  occasion,  from  Harlequin  to  puppets. 
Harlequin,  puppets,  actors  for  actors,  he  was  of  opinion 
that  all  were  alike  and  were  played  by  the  same  string. 

Though  that  may  be  practical  wisdom,  we  cannot 
deny  that  talent  always  loses  something  in  not  having 
a  high  ideal  in  view.  Le  Sage  felt  the  effects  of  this: 
after  attaining  to  the  height  of  observation  in  Le  Diable 
boiteux,  and  in  Gil  Bias,  and  to  the  quick  of  comedy 
in  Crispin,  and  in  Turcaret,  he  relaxed,  he  repeated 
himself,  he  dropped  a  little;  he  even  went  so  far 
down  as  to  allow  himself  certain  last  publications  like 
the  yalise  trouvee  and  Le  Melange  Amusant,  which 
are,  indeed,  the  bottom  of  his  bag  or  valise. 

Let  us  imagine  Moliere  without  Boileau  at  his  side 
to  spur  him  on,  scold  him,  advise  him  on  the  noble 
comedy  of  the  Misanthrope ;  Moliere  making  a  series 
of  Georges  Dandins,  Scapins,  and  Pourceaugnacs  in 
diminutive.  Here  is  the  misfortune  that  Le  Sage,  a  sort 
of  modified  Moliere,  had  to  bear:  he  had  no  Aristar- 
chus  at  his  side,  and  he  abandoned  himself  without 
reserve  to  the  inclinations  of  his  nature,  while,  at  the 
same  time,  under  the  necessity  of  making  a  livelihood. 

Le  Sage  was  sixty-seven  years  of  age  when  the 
last  volume  of  Gil  Bias  appeared.  Three  years  later 
(1738)  he  published  Le  Bachelier  de  Salamanque, 
which  he  valued,  he  said,   as  the  fruit  of  his  old  age. 


Xe  Saae,  103 

In  this  composition  he  followed  his  usual  custom. 
While  stating  that  it  was  taken  from  a  Spanish  manu- 
script, he  filled  it  with  French  manners  and  customs, 
especially  those  of  our  little  abbes,  a  class  unknown  in 
Spain;  also  with  a  description  (to  be  found  in  the 
second  part  of  the  Bachelier)  of  the  manners  and  cus- 
toms in  Mexico,  which  he  took,  without  acknowledg- 
ment, from  the  narrative  of  an  Irishman,  Thomas 
Gage,  translated  many  years  earlier  into  French.  But 
all  these  borrowings,  these  reports  of  others,  and  the 
things  he  added  of  his  own  invention,  are  united  and 
blended  together,  as  usual,  in  the  course  of  an  easy 
and  amusing  narrative. 

Another  work  of  his,  and  by  no  means  the  least  ad- 
mirable, was  the  comedian  Montmenil,  his  son,  an 
excellent  actor,  whom  all  who  saw  him  act  declared 
inimitable.  Montmenil,  who  was  for  a  time  an  abbe, 
but  who  could  not  resist  his  vocation,  played  Turcaret 
and  the  Avocat  Patelin  admirably;  he  also  played  the 
marquis  in  Turcaret,  the  valet  La  Branche  in  Crispin, 
and,  in  general,  excelled  in  the  parts  of  valets  and 
peasants.  It  can  be  said  that  he  acted  as  his  father 
wrote  and  narrated.  Montmenil  merely  translated 
into  another  form  the  same  comic  spirit,  the  same 
family  talent.  Le  Sage  would  not,  for  some  time, 
forgive  his  son  for  becoming  an  actor,  and,  above  all, 
an  actor  at  the  Comedie  Fran^aise,  with  which  he 
was  perpetually  at  war  in  the  interests  of  his  Theatre 
de  la  Foire.     But  one  day  friends  dragged  him  to  a 


I04  Xe  Sage. 

representation  of  Turcaret ;  there  he  saw  his  son, 
recognised  his  double  work,  wept  with  joy,  and  be- 
came once  more  a  father.  And  so  much  a  father  that 
the  death  of  Montmenil,  which  occurred  suddenly  in 
1743,  was  the  great  affliction  of  his  old  age. 

"Le  Sage,  having  lost  Montmenil,  and  being  too 
old  to  work,  too  proud  to  ask  help,  and  too  honest  to 
borrow,  retired  with  his  wife  and  daughters  to  the 
house  of  his  son,  the  canon,  at  Boulogne-sur-mer." 
It  is  the  Abbe  de  Voisenon  who  speaks.  Voisenon 
was  then  grand-vicar  to  the  Bishop  of  Boulogne.  The 
canon,  son  of  Le  Sage,  to  whose  house  the  old  father 
went  to  finish  his  days,  was  a  joyous  good-liver  him- 
self "He  knew  imperturbably  all  the  plays  of  La 
Foire,  and  could  sing  them  even  better  than  his  Mass." 
Ecclesiastic,  of  about  the  same  force  as  the  Abbe  de 
Voisenon,  he  would  have  made  a  capital  actor.  Le 
Sage  had  still  another  son,  who  became  an  actor,  and 
travelled  about  Germany  under  the  name  of  Pittence; 
he  resembled  the  least  good  works  of  his  ftither. 

Le  Sage  was  deaf,  and  became  so  at  forty  years  of 
age.  This  affliction,  which  increased  with  years, 
must  have  contributed  to  keep  him  from  the  salons  of 
the  great  world,  but  it  did  not  check  in  the  least  his 
natural  gaiety.  He  was  obliged,  in  conversing,  to  use 
a  trumpet,  which  he  called  his  "benefactor,"  inas- 
much, he  said,  as  he  used  it  to  communicate  with 
persons  of  intellect,  and  need  only  lay  it  down  to 
avoid  hearing  bores  and  fools.     Towards  the  end  of 


%c  Saae,  105 

his  life,  he  did  not  have  full  use  of  his  faculties,  except 
in  the  middle  of  the  day;  those  about  him  remarked 
that  his  mind  seemed  to  rise  and  set  with  the  sun.  He 
died  at  Boulogne,  November  17,  1747,  in  his  eightieth 
year.  The  Comte  de  Tressan,  then  governor  of  the 
province,  made  it  his  duty  to  attend  the  funeral  with 
his  staff.  Death  placed  Le  Sage  in  his  true  ranl<;  and 
he,  who  had  never  been  of  any  consequence  in  his 
lifetime,  and  who  was  never  mentioned  without  a 
little  word  of  complaint  and  regret  being  mingled  with 
his  praise,  is  to-day  classed  in  the  memory  of  men 
after  the  Lucians  and  the  Terences,  beside  the  Field- 
ings  and  the  Goldsmiths,  and  beneath  the  Cervantes 
and  the  Molieres. 


^onteequieu. 


107 


/IDontesquteu, 

(Cbarles  Oc  SeconOat,  JBaron  Oe  Ua  3Bt&0e,) 

THE  worst  of  journalists  is  that  they  speak  only 
of  new  books,  as  if  truth  were  never  new. 
It  seems  to  me  that  until  a  man  has  read  all 
the  old  books  he  has  no  reason  to  prefer  the  new." 
It  is  Usbek,  or  rather  Montesquieu,  who  says  that  in 
the  Lettres  Persanes,  and  it  is  fair  to  apply  the  words 
to  himself.  In  looking  over  the  field  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  in  every  direction,  I  have  many  times  en- 
countered the  great  name  and  the  imposing  figure  of 
Montesquieu,  without  pausing  over  them.  Why  ? 
For  many  reasons.  The  first  is,  that  he  is  one  of 
those  men  whom  we  approach  with  fear,  because  of 
the  real  respect  they  inspire  and  the  sort  of  religion 
that  has  grown  up  around  them.  The  second  reason 
is  that  he  has  been  so  ably  spoken  of  by  masters  that 
it  seems  useless  to  repeat  feebly  what  has  already 
been  so  well  said.  A  final  reason,  and  one  which  is 
peculiar  to  this  order  of  sketches,  is  that  in  writing 
for  journals  one  is  always  something  of  a  journalist; 
we  search  for  the  timely,  we  await  the  occasion,  and, 
without  precisely  binding  ourselves  to  speak  of  none 

109 


no  /IDontesquteu. 

but  works  "  still  hot  from  the  forge "  (another  of 
Montesquieu's  expressions),  we  desire,  at  any  rate, 
that  some  natural  circumstance  should  bring  us  back 
to  old  books  and  direct  attention  to  them. 

I  have  always  hoped  to  find  something  of  the  kind 
in  respect  to  Montesquieu.  We  have  good  and  elo- 
quent Eulogies  upon  him;  but  a  complete  History  of 
his  life  and  works  does  not  exist.  We  know  many 
details  about  him,  but  not  as  many  as  ought  to  have 
been  collected,  and  as  we  desire  to  know.  He  left 
a  great  number  of  manuscripts;  it  was  said  at  first 
that  his  son,  M.  de  Secondat,  towards  the  close  of 
1793,  when  blood  began  to  flow  in  Bordeaux,  threw 
all  his  father's  papers  and  manuscripts  into  the  fire, 
from  a  fear  that  pretexts  might  be  found  in  them  to 
trouble  the  family.  It  was  a  risk  of  death  in  those 
days  to  be  the  son  of  Montesquieu  or  of  Buffon ;  and 
the  only  safety  was  to  keep  that  fact  out  of  sight. 
One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  mad-brained  clubs  in  Paris 
was  to  declare  Montesquieu  an  aristocrat  and  an  imbe- 
cile. But  this  news  of  the  destruction  of  his  manu- 
scripts proved  false;  and  M.  Walckenaer,  the  great 
biographical  investigator,  had  the  pleasure  of  thus  in- 
forming the  lettered  public.  The  greater  part  of  these 
manuscripts  was  brought  to  Paris  about  the  year 
1804,  and  M.  Walckenaer,  in  acknowledgment  of  his 
zeal,  was  allowed  to  examine  them  for  several  hours; 
he  wrote  a  letter  on  the  subject  which  was  inserted  in 
the  Archives  Utter  aires  de  V  Europe,  accompanied  by 


MONTESQUIEU. 
After  the  painting  by  Deveria. 


Montesquieu. 


Ill 


a  few  extracts.  Since  then,  M.  Laine,  the  former 
minister  of  the  Interior,  obtained  permission  of  the 
Secondat  family  to  make  further  researches  among  the 
precious  papers,  and  he  meditated  a  work  on  Montes- 
quieu which  remained  a  mere  project.  Let  us  hope 
that  this  family  inheritance  still  exists,  and  that  it  may 
finally  be  put  to  use  in  the  interests  of  all,  and  to  the 
glory  of  the  illustrious  ancestor.  Montesquieu  is  not 
one  of  the  men  who  have  anything  to  fear  from  close 
knowledge;  he  was  a  great  man  seen  near  by  or  far 
off;  he  had  no  recesses  in  his  heart  to  conceal;  all 
those  who  approached  him  have  praised  his  good- 
ness, his  kindliness,  as  much  as  they  have  his  genius. 
The  few  notes  of  his  that  have  seen  the  light,  and  in 
which  he  draws  his  portrait,  give  a  life  and  natural- 
ness to  his  personality  which  are  better  than  majesty. 
"Plutarch  charms  me  always,"  he  says:  "there  are 
circumstances  attached  to  persons  that  give  great 
pleasure." 

Born  on  the  i8th  of  January,  1689,  at  the  chateau 
of  La  Brede,  near  Bordeaux,  Montesquieu  came  of  a 
family  of  the  robe  and  the  sword,  belonging  to  the 
good  nobility  of  Guienne:  "Though  my  name  is 
neither  good  nor  bad,"  he  said,  "having  little  more 
than  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  proved  nobility, 
still  I  am  attached  to  it."  His  father,  who  had  been 
in  the  army,  retired  early  and  carefully  superintended 
his  son's  education.  Young  Montesquieu  was  de- 
stined to  the  magistracy.     Study  was  at  all  times  his 


112  /IDontesquieu. 

great  passion.  Mention  is  made  of  precocious  and 
rather  daring  works  wiiicii  he  produced,  but  had  the 
prudence  to  withhold.  He  read  pen  in  hand,  and 
reflectingly.  "On  leaving  school,  they  put  books 
on  law  into  my  hands;  1  looked  for  the  spirit  in  them." 
This  spirit  of  the  things  of  law  and  of  history  was 
the  object  of  his  search  through  life;  he  never  rested 
till  he  thought  he  had  found  it.  His  genius  was 
essentially  turned  to  this  class  of  investigation.  He 
had,  further,  a  gift  of  ready  imagination,  which  easily 
clothed  both  thought  and  maxim  with  a  poetic  form, 
as  did  his  compatriot  Montaigne;  but  he  was  less  easy 
than  Montaigne;  he  had  not  the  same  grace  of  style. 
The  classics  were  to  him  objects  of  worship.  He 
never  knew  much  of  that  first  simple,  natural,  artless 
antiquity  of  which  Fenelon,  like  an  exiled  contemporary 
among  us,  was  the  exponent.  Montesquieu's  antiquity 
went  no  farther  back  than  the  second  period,  which  was 
more  reflective,  more  astir,  and  already  Latin;  or,  to  put 
it  more  truly,  perhaps,  he  confounded  his  classics 
together,  from  Homer  to  Seneca  and  Marcus  Aurelius, 
obtaining  from  them  all  features  or  illusions  to  enhance 
his  modern  thought.  These  he  used  like  Corinthian 
vases  or  bronze  busts  placed  in  conspicuous  places  as 
glorious  testimonials.  A  line  of  Homer,  a  verse  of 
Virgil,  blended  rapidly  with  his  thought,  seemed  to 
him  to  complete  it,  and  consecrate  it  under  a  divine 
form.  Montesquieu's  work  is  inlaid  throughout  with 
these  sacred  fragments:     "I  confess  my  love  for  the 


Montesquieu.  113 

ancients,"  he  exclaims;  "antiquity  enchants  me,  and 
I  am  always  ready  to  say  with  Pliny:  '  It  is  to  Athens 
that  you  go;  respect  the  gods!'" — And  he,  himself, 
feeling  thus,  deserves  to  be  treated  as  a  classic:  to 
quote  Montesquieu,  to  detach  a  saying  of  his  and  place 
it  in  a  writing,  honours  the  writer. 

Counsellor  of  the  parliament  at  Bordeaux  from  1714, 
the  death  of  an  uncle  left  him  the  oifice  of  president 
of  the  municipal  court  in  17 16;  he  was  then  twenty- 
seven  years  of  age.  Speaking  of  his  friend  the  Mare- 
chal  de  Berwick  as  being  at  the  head  of  a  regiment 
and  governor  of  a  province  while  still  adolescent, 
Montesquieu  said:  "Thus,  at  seventeen  years  of  age 
he  was  in  the  situation,  so  auspicious  for  a  man  with 
a  lofty  soul,  of  seeing  the  road  to  glory  open  before 
him  with  every  possibility  of  doing  great  things." 
Without  pretending  to  say  the  same  of  his  office  of 
judge,  obtained  so  early,  Montesquieu  was  thence- 
forth on  a  footing  where  he  could  see  all,  where  he 
could  judge  men  on  their  own  level,  without  making 
efforts  to  insinuate  himself  among  them;  he  had  only 
to  choose  his  relations  with  them  as  they  offered.  It 
was  thus  that  he  knew  Marechal  de  Berwick,  governor 
of  the  provmce,  so  intimately.  Born  without  ambi- 
tion of  great  fortune,  he  found  himself  placed  in  a  rank 
which  might  seem  mediocre  compared  with  great 
stations,  but  which  was  all  the  more  suited  to  his 
chosen  role  of  political  observer.  He  could  apply  his 
whole  youth  to  that  role,  without  losing  anything. 

VOL.  I. — 8. 


114  /IDontesquieu. 

For  ten  years  Montesquieu  conscientiously  filled 
this  office  of  magistrate;  then,  finding  himself,  as  his 
studies  became  more  extended,  too  confined,  he  sold 
his  charge  in  1726.  He  recognised,  himself,  that  ht, 
was  not  fitted  for  public  employments,  nor  even  for 
what  is  called  a  profession. 

"What  has  always  given  me  a  rather  bad  opinion  of  myself,"  he 
said,  "  is  that  there  are  very  few  employments  in  the  republic  for 
which  1  should  be  truly  fitted.  As  for  my  office  of  Judge,  I  have  a 
very  just  heart,  1  readily  comprehend  questions  in  themselves;  but  as 
to  legal  procedure,  1  never  understood  it.  Nevertheless,  I  applied 
myself  to  learn  it  ;  but  what  disgasted  me  the  most  was  to  see  stupid 
fellows  possess  the  very  talent  that  escaped  me,  so  to  speak." 

From  this  we  may  infer  that  Montesquieu  was  not 
practical.  Would  he  have  been  more  in  his  right 
place  as  Chancellor  of  France  than  he  was  as  judge  of 
a  municipal  court  ?  Honest  man  like  d'Aguesseau, 
man  of  Letters  and  philosopher  like  Bacon,  would  he 
have  been  more  capable  of  business  affairs  than  they? 
A  letter,  written  at  the  beginning  of  his  travels,  shows 
that  he  had  a  momentary  idea  of  becoming  an  ambas- 
sador and  being  employed  at  foreign  Courts ;  but  what 
is  certain  is  that  he  remained  such  as  we  know  him 
and  admire  him — the  great,  the  immortal  investigator 
of  the  spirit  of  history,  often  venturesome,  but  always 
fruitful. 

The  first  writings  that  we  have  of  his  are  Dis- 
courses composed  for  the  Academy  of  Bordeaux,  of 
which  he  was  a  member  after  171 6;  in  them  his 
talent  shows  itself;  and  we  see,   as  its  origin,  the 


/IDontesquieu.  115 

particular  form  which  Montesquieu  afterwards  de- 
lighted in,  namely:  classic  imagery  or  illusion  applied 
to  modern  objects  and  ideas.  But  here  we  perceive 
affectation;  the  mythology  is  too  profuse.  Writing  a 
report  on  the  physical  cause  of  the  Echo,  or  a  treat- 
ise on  Anatomy,  Montesquieu  brings  in  too  many 
nymphs  and  goddesses.  At  this  period,  he  visibly 
imitated  Fontenelle,  whose  clever  Reports  to  the 
Academy  of  Sciences  were  made  to  charm.  Was  it 
Fontenelle  or  Montesquieu  who  wrote  the  following 
passage  on  the  discoveries  in  physics  which,  after 
letting  themselves  be  awaited  for  ages,  burst  forth 
suddenly,  one  after  another,  from  Galileo  to  Newton: 
"One  would  say  that  Nature  acted  like  those  virgins 
who  long  preserved  their  most  precious  possession, 
and  then  allowed  themselves  to  be  ravished  in  a  mo- 
ment of  that  they  had  preserved  with  such  care,  and 
defended  with  such  constancy." 

And  here  is  another  thought  that  makes  a  singular 
appearance  in  a  Report  written  by  Montesquieu  on 
the  "Usage  of  the  Renal  Glands":  "Truth  seems 
sometimes  as  though  it  ran  to  meet  those  who  seek 
it;  often  there  is  no  interval  between  desire,  hope, 
and  enjoyment."  Montesquieu,  as  academician  of  the 
Sciences  of  Bordeaux,  certainly  paid  tribute  to  the 
style  in  vogue  and  to  his  admiration  for  Fontenelle. 

What  we  like  better  to  observe  in  these  first  es- 
says of  Montesquieu  is  the  love  of  science,  and  of 
study  applied  to  all  objects.     We  have  not  only  his 


ii6  /IDontesquieu, 

Reports  on  the  work  of  others,  but  his  own  "Obser- 
vations" on  natural  history,  read  in  1721.  He  had 
studied  under  the  microscope  a  little  red  insect,  a 
plant  of  misletoe,  and  oak  lichens;  he  had  dissected  a 
frog;  he  had  made  researches  into  the  nutritive  quali- 
ties of  various  vegetables.  The  author  declared  that 
he  attached  no  greater  importance  to  these  observa- 
tions and  experiments  than  they  deserved:  "They 
are  the  fruit  of  country  idleness.  They  may  die  in 
the  region  that  gave  birth  to  them;  but  those  who 
live  in  society  have  duties  to  fulfil;  we  owe  it  to  ours 
to  give  account  of  even  our  amusements."  In  closing 
this  report,  he  almost  seems  to  be  endeavouring  to 
lessen  the  merit  of  an  observer;  whereas  the  latter  has 
need  of  all  his  subtlety  of  mind  and  his  skill  of  inven- 
tion to  bring  out  the  fact  that  is  under  his  eyes: 

"  It  does  not  need  much  intellect,"  says  Montesquieu,  "  to  see  the 
Pantheon,  the  Coliseum,  or  the  Pyramids;  and  it  does  not  need  much 
more  to  see  a  worm  under  a  microscope,  or  a  star  through  a  telescope; 
it  is  in  this  that  physics  are  so  admirable:  great  geniuses,  narrow 
minds,  and  second-rate  people  can  all  take  a  part.  He  who  could 
not  compose  a  system  like  Newton  can  make  an  observation  which 
would  put  that  great  philosopher  on  the  rack.  Nevertheless,  Newton 
is  always  Newton,  that  is  to  say,  the  successor  of  Descartes,  and  the 
other  man  is  a  common  man,  a  worthless  artist,  who  saw  once,  and 
perhaps  never  thought  at  all." 

We  ought  to  see  in  these  words,  not  contempt  of 
fact,  but  the  subordination  of  fact  to  idea,  which  is  a 
characteristic  of  Montesquieu.  He  does  justice  else- 
where to  observation  when  he  says:  "It  is  the  history 
of  physics;    systems  are   its   fable."     Thus  Montes- 


/IDontesquieu,  117 

quieu,  at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  busied  himself 
with  science,  as  Buffon  did  soon  after,  and  as  Goethe 
did  later;  he  furnished  funds  for  a  prize  in  Anatomy, 
and  seemed  to  aim  only  at  serious  results  in  keeping 
with  the  gravity  of  his  profession. 

But  during  the  time  that  he  worked  at  these  "Ob- 
servations "  on  the  objects  of  natural  history,  he  gave 
forth  another  work,  by  the  way,  for  which  he  had 
needed  no  microscope;  his  own  eyes  had  served  him 
well  enough.  The  Lettres  Persanes  appeared,  with- 
out name  of  author,  in  1721 ;  and  they  instantly  had  a 
success  that  marks  a  date  and  made  it  the  book  of 
the  epoch. 

The  Lettres  Persanes  is  one  of  the  three  great  books 
of  Montesquieu's  life — for  in  truth  he  wrote  but  three: 
these  Lettres  ( 1 72 1 ) ;  his  admirable  work,  Le  Grandeur 
et  la  Decadence  des  Romains  (1734),  which  is  only  a 
detached  episode  in  advance  of  his  third  and  last  great 
book,  L' Esprit  des  Lois  (1748).  The  manner  of  these 
three  works  differs,  but  not  as  much  as  one  would 
think.  The  basis  of  the  ideas  differs  still  less.  The 
book  on  the  Romans  is  the  one  in  which  the  writer 
restrains  himself  most;  he  is  master  of  himself  from 
first  to  last;  his  tone  is  firm,  lofty,  simple,  and  wholly 
on  the  level  of  the  majesty  of  the  People-king.  In 
the  Esprit  des  Lois,  he  often  mingles,  one  hardly 
knows  how,  epigram  with  grandeur.  In  the  Lettres 
Persanes,  Montesquieu,  then  young,  sports  and  takes 
his  pleasure;    but  gravity  is  found  in  his  play;    the 


ii8  /IDontesquieu, 

greater  part  of  his  ideas  are  there  in  the  germ, — better, 
indeed,  than  in  the  germ,  they  are  developing.  He  is 
more  indiscreet  than  he  is  later;  and  it  is  in  this  sense 
principally  that  he  is  less  mature.  He  will  retain  most 
of  his  ideas,  but,  in  his  future  works,  he  will  not  pro- 
duce them  in  the  same  way;  he  will  reflect  them 
differently,  and  will  speak  of  them  only  with  gravity, 
feeling  more  and  more  the  grandeur  of  the  social  insti- 
tution, and  desiring  the  ennobling  of  human  nature. 

If  we  desire  to  estimate  Montesquieu's  nature  and 
quality  of  mind,  we  must  remember  what  he  wrote 
himself,  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  to  d'Alembert, 
who  asked  of  him  (for  I'Encyclopedie)  certain  articles 
on  points  he  had  already  treated  in  the  Esprit  des  Lois: 
"I  have,"  he  said,  "drawn  from  my  brain  on  those 
topics  all  that  was  in  it.  My  mind  is  a  mould;  all 
that  comes  out  of  it  looks  alike;  therefore  I  could  only 
say  for  you  what  I  have  said,  and  perhaps  say  it  worse 
than  I  did."  This  fundamental  oneness  of  mould  in 
Montesquieu  is  felt  through  all  his  great  variety  of 
productions,  from  his  first  to  his  last  work. 

That  which  gives  the  Leitres  Persanes  their  date 
and  the  stamp  of  the  Regency,  is  the  touch  of  irrev- 
erence and  libertinism,  which  comes  in  to  lighten  the 
background  and  season  the  book  to  the  taste  of  the 
day.  Where  did  Montesquieu  get  the  idea  of  making 
Persians  talk  in  that  way,  putting  his  own  thoughts 
under  that  slender  disguise  ?  It  is  said  that  he  owed 
the  idea  to  Dufresny,  who,  in  a  book  entitled  Amuse- 


/IDontesQuieu,  119 

ments  s6rieux  et  comiques,  imagines,  by  way  of  variety, 
a  Siamese  in  Paris,  dropping  from  the  clouds  in  the 
midst  of  the  Rue  Saint  Honore,  and  making  reflections 
in  his  own  way.  Persons  who  have  studied  English 
literature  prefer  to  think  that  Montesquieu  had  in 
mind  a  letter  supposed  to  be  written  from  London  by 
an  Indian  of  the  island  of  Java,  which  can  be  read  in 
Addison's  "Spectator."  But  the  idea,  whether  it 
belonged  to  the  Siamese  or  the  man  from  Java,  became 
original  in  Montesquieu  through  the  development  that 
he  gave  to  it,  and  the  boldness  with  which  he  natural- 
ised it  in  Paris.  The  Lettres  Persanes,  with  all  their 
defects,  is  one  of  the  books  of  genius  which  our 
literature  has  produced. 

Usbek  and  Rica,  two  friends,  two  Persians  of  rank, 
leave  their  country  and  make  a  journey  to  Europe. 
Usbek,  the  principal  personage,  has  a  harem  at  Ispa- 
han, and  on  leaving  Persia  he  commits  it  to  the  care 
of  the  Grand  Eunuch,  a  black  man,  whom  he  reminds, 
from  time  to  time,  of  his  strict  injunctions.  In  this 
harem  are  women  whom  he  loves  exceedingly,  and 
the  author  would  not  be  sorry  to  interest  us  in  this 
romantic  topic,  very  choice  in  its  Asiatic  taste  and 
carefully  studied.  He  succeeded,  no  doubt,  in  doing 
so  at  that  date — 1721;  the  libertine,  or,  tospeak  cor- 
rectly, the  licentious  part  of  the  Lettres  Persanes,  the 
perpetual  details  of  eunuchs,  passions,  practices,  and 
almost  of  utensils,  on  which  the  imagination  of  readers 
could   dwell  with  pleasure,   required  a  society  that 


I20  /iDontesquieu, 

enjoyed  the  novels  of  Crebillon  jf/5.  To-day,  this  part 
seems  to  us  artificial,  dead;  and,  if  it  were  longer,  in- 
tolerably wearisome.  What  pleases  us,  and  what  we 
seek  in  these  Leiires,  is  Montesquieu  himself,  slightly 
disguised  among  his  various  personages,  and  judging, 
under  that  transparent  mask,  the  manners  and  cus- 
toms, the  ideas — in  short,  the  whole  social  life  of  his 
youth. 

Rica  is  a  satirist,  Parisian  from  the  first  day,  and 
painting  with  a  jest  the  eccentricities  and  absurdities 
of  the  queer  characters  who  pass  before  his  eyes,  and 
with  whom  he  gets  along  very  well.  Usbek,  more 
serious,  resists  and  reasons;  he  takes  up  questions,  he 
propounds  and  discusses  them  in  letters  which  he  ad- 
dresses to  the  theologians  of  his  own  country.  The 
art  of  the  work,  and  what,  through  the  apparent 
mixture,  shows  the  talent  of  composition,  is  that, 
side  by  side  with  a  harem  letter,  there  will  be  one  on 
free-will.  An  ambassador  from  Persia  to  Muscovy 
writes  a  half-page  to  Usbek  about  the  Tartars,  which 
might  be  a  chapter  in  the  Esprit  des  Lois.  Rica,  on 
the  one  hand,  writes  the  cleverest  criticism  on  the 
chatter  of  Frenchmen  and  on  the  talkers  with  nothing 
to  say  in  society;  on  the  other,  Usbek  discusses  God 
and  justice  in  a  very  noble  and  far-reaching  letter. 
The  idea  of  justice,  independent  in  itself,  is  therein 
explained  under  the  true  principles  of  the  social  insti- 
tution. Montesquieu  (for  it  is  he  who  speaks  here, 
as  he  spoke  in  his  own  name  to  the  end  of  his  life). 


/IDontesquieu.  121 

tries  to  establish  in  what  respect  that  idea  of  justice 
does  not  depend  on  human  conventions:  "If  it  did  so 
depend,"  he  adds,  "it  would  be  a  terrible  truth  that 
we  should  have  to  conceal  from  ourselves." 

Montesquieu  goes  farther.  He  tries  to  render  the 
idea  and  the  worship  of  justice  independent  of  all  ex- 
istence higher  than  man;  he  goes  so  far  as  to  say, 
through  the  mouth  of  Usbek:  "If  there  were  no  God, 
we  ought  always  to  love  justice;  that  is  to  say,  we 
should  make  efforts  to  resemble  that  Being,  of  whom 
we  have  so  lofty  an  idea,  and  who,  if  he  existed, 
would  necessarily  be  just.  Free  as  we  may  be  from 
the  yoke  of  religion,  we  cannot  be  free  from  that  of 
equity." 

Here  we  touch  the  very  foundation  of  Montesquieu's 
thought,  and  of  all  his  habitual  mental  procedure;  let 
us  not  be  weak  or  wavering,  let  us  not  hesitate  to 
expose  the  truth  in  its  nudity.     He  says  still  further: 

"  Even  if  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  an  error,  1  should  be  sorry 
not  to  believe  it:  I  own  that  I  am  not  so  humble  as  the  atheists.  I  do 
not  know  what  they  think,  but,  for  my  part,  1  do  not  choose  to  barter 
the  idea  of  my  immortality  for  that  of  the  beatitude  of  to-day.  I  am 
glad  to  believe  myself  as  immortal  as  God  himself.  Independently  of 
revealed  ideas,  metaphysical  ideas  give  me  a  very  strong  hope  of  my 
eternal  happiness  which  I  do  not  choose  to  renounce." 

In  these  words  we  have  the  measure  of  Montes- 
quieu's belief  and  his  noble  desire:  even  in  the  ex- 
pression of  that  desire,  the  supposition  glides  in  that 
"even  if  the  thing  did  not  exist "  it  would  be  best  to 
believe  in  it.     I  do  not  blame  that  homage  rendered. 


122  Montesquieu. 

in  any  case,  to  the  elevation  and  the  idealisation  of 
human  nature;  but  I  cannot  help  remarking  that  it  is 
taking  and  accepting  the  ideas  of  justice  and  of  religion 
on  the  political  and  social  side  and  not  potentially  in 
themselves.  Montesquieu,  when,  by  degrees,  he  freed 
himself  from  the  irony  of  the  Lettres  Persanes,  came 
more  and  more  to  respect  the  objects  of  human  ven- 
eration and  conscience.  Not  that  I  think  he  entered 
into  them  with  more  personal  feeling,  for  in  the  midst 
of  his  most  majestic  parts  a  sort  of  barrenness  is  felt. 
He  has  ideas,  but  he  has  not,  it  has  been  remarked, 
civic  feelings.  A  sort  of  life  is  lacking,  a  tie  that  binds : 
we  feel  the  powerful  brain,  but  not  the  heart.  I 
think  it  incumbent  on  me  to  note,  if  not  this  weak 
side,  at  least  this  cold  side  of  a  great  man. 

One  of  his  thoughts  has  always  impressed  me: — 
"  Fontenelle,"  he  said,  "is  as  much  above  other  men 
by  his  heart  as  he  is  above  all  men  of  Letters  by  his 
mind."  I  have  read  and  re-read  those  words  and, 
recalling  what  Fontenelle  was,  I  thought  they  ought 
to  read:  "Fontenelle  as  much  below  other  men  in 
heart." — But  no,  it  seems  really  to  be  eulogy  that 
Montesquieu  desired  to  make  of  Fontenelle;  and  he 
adds  an  excellent  quality  in  such  a  man:  "  He  praises 
others  without  reluctance."  What  Montesquieu  really 
admired  in  Fontenelle  was  equanimity,  absence  of 
envy,  breadth,  prudence,  and,  perhaps,  indifference. 
The  only  conclusion  that  I  seek  to  draw  from  this  is, 
that,  very  superior  to  Fontenelle  in  talent  and  as  a 


/IDontesquieiu  123 

writer,  he  was,  more  or  less,  of  the  same  religion  in 
morals. 

The  following  memorable  confessions  of  Montes- 
quieu are  often  quoted: 

"  Study  has  been  to  me  a  sovereign  remedy  against  the  vexations  of 
life,  having  never  had  an  annoyance  that  one  hour's  reading  did  not 
dissipate." 

"  1  wake  in  the  morning  with  an  inward  joy  at  seeing  the  light;  I 
see  the  light  with  a  sort  of  transport,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  day  1  am 
content,  I  pass  the  night  without  waking;  in  the  evening,  when  1 
go  to  bed,  a  species  of  torpor  prevents  me  from  making  reflections." 

"  I  am  nearly  always  as  content  with  fools  as  with  men  of  intellect 
.     .     .     etc." 

Man  of  study  and  of  thought,  detached  rather  early 
from  passions,  and  having  at  no  time  been  led  away 
by  them,  he  lived  and  dwelt  in  the  steadiness  of  intel- 
lect. Very  kind  in  private  life,  natural  and  simple,  he 
deserved  to  be  loved  by  all  around  him  as  a  man  of 
genius  can  be;  but  even  in  his  most  human  aspects 
we  still  find  this  stiff,  indifferent  side;  a  benevolent 
and  lofty  equity  rather  than  tenderness  of  soul. 

Who  does  not  know  that  fine  act  in  his  life  when 
at  Marseilles,  where  he  often  went  to  visit  his  sister. 
Wishing  one  day  to  go  out  in  a  boat,  he  met  a  young 
man  named  Robert  who,  with  none  of  the  manners 
or  tone  of  a  sailor,  offered  to  take  him.  The  young 
man,  while  rowing  the  boat,  told  him  he  did  that  sort 
of  work  only  on  Sundays  and  fete-days,  in  order  to 
earn  all  he  could  for  the  purpose  of  buying  his  father, 
who  had  been  taken  prisoner  by  a  corsair,  and  was 


124  Montesquieu, 

then  a  slave  in  Tetuan,  Montesquieu  informed  him- 
self carefully  on  the  facts  of  the  matter  before  parting 
from  the  young  man  at  the  wharf.  Some  months 
later,  the  father,  freed  from  slavery,  returned  to  his 
family,  not  knowing  whence  the  unhoped-for  suc- 
cour had  come.  You  weep;  but  wait!  —  admire,  but 
do  not  shed  tears.  Two  or  three  years  later,  the 
young  man,  who  feels  sure  it  was  his  unknown  pas- 
senger to  whom  he  owed  the  deliverance  of  his  father, 
meets  him  on  the  quay  and  flings  himself  at  his  feet 
in  gratitude,  entreating  him  to  come  and  see  the  family 
he  has  rendered  so  happy.  Montesquieu  brusquely 
draws  back,  denies  everything,  refuses  to  go  with  the 
young  man,  and  tears  himself  without  pity  from  a 
legitimate  gratitude.  It  was  not  until  his  death  that 
the  benefaction  was  revealed.  Here  I  seem  to  see  in 
Montesquieu  one  of  those  gods  who  are  benefactors 
of  humanity  without  human  tenderness.  It  is  thus 
that  in  the  "  Hippolytus  "  of  Euripides,  Diana,  at  the 
moment  the  young  hero  is  about  to  die,  moves  away, 
though  she  seemed  to  have  loved  him:  but  however 
friendly  to  mortals  were  these  gods  of  antiquity,  tears 
were  forbidden  to  their  eyes  —  the  God-Man  had  not 
yet  come. 

In  this  view  which  I  have  allowed  myself  to  express 
on  the  moral  nature  of  Montesquieu,  and  which  his 
Letires  Persanes  called  forth,  far  be  it  from  me  to  di- 
minish the  severe  yet  human  beauty  of  his  character. 
I  content  myself  by  defining  it,  and  by  describing  that 


/IDontesquieu.  125 

stoical  humanity  in  so  far  as  it  was  apart  from  ciiarity 
as  siiown  by  Pascal  and  Bossuet. 

All  the  questions  of  the  day  under  the  Regency  are 
touched  upon  in  the  Lettres  Persanes  —  the  dispute  of 
the  ancients  and  moderns,  the  revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes  and  its  effects,  the  quarrel  concerning  the 
Bull  Unigenitus,  and  so  forth ;  the  author  serves  the 
spirit  of  the  day  by  mingling  his  views  with  it; 
the  reign  of  Louis  XIV  is  sharply  attacked  with  a 
backward  thrust.  In  the  famous  episode  of  the  Trog- 
lodytes, Montesquieu  relates,  after  his  manner,  his 
dream  of  Salente.  In  the  portraits  of  the  Farmer-gen- 
eral, the  Director,  the  Casuist,  the  Man  a  bonnes  for- 
tunes, the  Gambling  Wife,  Montesquieu  equals  La 
Bruyere  in  recollection.  He  resembles  him  also  in 
language,  but  without  intending  it.  His  own  lan- 
guage, while  it  is  quite  as  new,  is  perhaps  less  com- 
plicated; it  has  a  clearness  and  a  singularly  picturesque 
quality.  The  Casuist  wishes  to  show  that  a  man 
of  his  profession  is  necessary  to  certain  persons,  who, 
without  aiming  at  perfection,  wish  to  secure  their 
salvation:  "As  they  have  no  ambition,"  he  says, 
' '  they  do  not  care  for  the  chief  places ;  thus  they  enter 
Paradise  as  righteous  as  they  can.  Provided  they  get 
there,  that  is  enough  for  them."  Elsewhere,  speaking 
of  men  whose  conversation  is  only  a  mirror  in  which 
they  exhibit  nothing  but  their  own  impertinent  faces: 
"Oh!  how  insipid  praise  is,"  he  exclaims,  "when  it 
reflects  back   to   the  place  whence  it  came!"     The 


126  riDontesquieu. 

whole  style  is  clear,  pungent,  full  of  wit,  a  little  thin 
and  sharp,  and  occasionally  incorrect. 

But  Montesquieu  has  certain  free  and  easy  ideas  as 
to  style.  "A  man  who  writes  well,"  he  thinks, 
"does  not  write  as  other  people  write,  but  as  he 
writes;  and  often  it  is  when  he  speaks  ill  that  he 
speaks  well."  He  writes,  therefore,  in  his  own  man- 
ner; and  that  manner,  always  refined  and  lively,  be- 
comes strong  and  proud  and  rises  higher  with  his 
topics.  1  have  said  that  he  liked  and  even  delighted 
in  a  style  of  imagery  or  of  picturesque  comparisons 
to  elucidate  his  thought:  for  example,  wishing  to 
make  Rica  say  that  the  husband  of  a  pretty  woman  in 
France,  if  he  is  worsted  at  home,  takes  his  revenge 
on  the  wives  of  others: 

"  This  title  of  husband  of  a  pretty  woman,"  he  writes,  "  which  is 
so  carefully  concealed  in  Asia,  is  borne  in  France  without  uneasiness. 
Men  feel  they  have  opportunity  to  find  compensation  everywhere. 
A  prince  consoles  himself  for  the  loss  of  a  fortress  by  capturing  an- 
other; when  the  Turks  took  Bagdad  from  us  did  we  not  take  the 
fortress  of  Kandahar  in  Mongol-Tartary  from  them  ?  " 

Exactly  in  the  same  manner  Montesquieu,  in  the 
Esprit  des  Lois,  describing  an  English  Utopian  who, 
having  under  his  eyes  the  image  of  true  liberty,  goes 
about  imagining  quite  another  liberty  in  his  book, 
says:  "He  built  Chalcedonia,  having  the  shores  of 
Byzantium  before  his  eyes."  In  Montesquieu's 
thought,  at  the  moment  when  we  least  expect  it, 
suddenly  the  summits  glow. 

Amid  the  audacity  and  the  irreverence  of  the  Lettres 


/IDontesqufeu.  127 

Persanes,  a  spirit  of  prudence  is  observable  in  Usbek's 
pen.  While  discussing  questions  so  well  and  occa- 
sionally letting  daylight  into  them,  Usbek  (and  here, 
perhaps,  is  a  contradiction  that  Montesquieu  failed 
to  avoid),  continues  to  remain  faithful  to  the  laws 
of  his  country  and  to  his  religion.  "It  is  true,"  he 
says,  "that,  by  a  caprice  that  comes  more  from  the 
nature  than  from  the  mind  of  men,  it  is  sometimes 
necessary  to  change  certain  laws,  but  the  case  is  rare; 
and  when  it  does  occur,  it  should  be  touched  with  a 
trembling  hand."  Rica  himself,  light-hearted  jester, 
remarking  that  in  courts  of  justice  when  judgment  is 
to  be  pronounced  the  votes  of  the  majority  are  taken, 
adds,  by  way  of  epigram:  "But  they  say  they  have 
found  by  experience  that  it  would  be  better  to  take 
those  of  the  minority;  and  that  is  natural  enough,  for 
there  are  very  few  just  minds,  and  all  the  world  agrees 
that  there  are  quantities  of  unjust  ones."  This  is 
enough  to  show  that  the  mind  that  dictated  the  Lettres 
Persanes  would  never  push  things  to  extremity  on 
the  side  of  reform  and  popular  revolution. 

After  touching  upon  questions  which  belong  pro- 
perly to  the  philosophy  of  history,  after  expressing 
astonishment  that  Frenchmen  should  have  abandoned 
the  old  laws  made  by  their  first  kings  in  the  assem- 
blies of  the  nation,  and,  having  thus  reached  the  thresh- 
old of  the  great  work  he  no  doubt  foresaw  in  the 
future,  Montesquieu  resumes  his  laughter  over  many 
subjects,  and  when  he  has  laughed  enough  he  stops 


128  /IDontesquieu. 

short.  The  Lettres  Persanes,  having  exhausted  the 
picture  and  the  satire  of  present  manners  and  morals, 
turns  to  the  romantic:  Usbek  receives  news  that  his 
harem,  profiting  by  his  absence,  has  made  a  revolu- 
tion; all  are  in  rebellion,  flying  at  each  other's  throats, 
and  killing  one  another.  It  is  a  voluptuous  and  de- 
lirious conclusion,  a  "fire  and  blood"  end,  that  has 
nothing  relating  to  us  in  it.  All  this  sensual  part  is 
dry  and  hard,  showing  that  Montesquieu's  imagina- 
tion lay  solely  in  the  direction  of  historical  and  moral 
observation.  Once  more  1  remark  that  there  is  in  the 
Lettres  Persanes,  from  beginning  to  end,  and  viewed 
as  a  whole,  a  resemblance  to  the  novels  of  Crebillon 
fits. 

Le  Temple  de  Guide,  published  in  1725,  was  an 
error  of  taste  and  a  misconception  of  talent.  Montes- 
quieu thought  he  was  imitating  the  Greeks  in  making 
this  little  prose  poem  out  of  complaisance  to  a  prin- 
cess of  the  Conde  blood,  Mademoiselle  de  Clermont. 
He  was  thirty-five  years  old  at  that  time,  and  he  wrote: 
"At  thirty-five  years  of  age,  I  still  loved."  But 
Montesquieu's  loves  seem  never  to  have  troubled  or 
touched  him  much.  In  vain  he  paints  his  Themire: 
he  still  seems  to  us  more  sensual  in  love  than  senti- 
mental: "In  my  youth,"  he  says,  "I  was  fortunate 
in  attaching  myself  to  women  who  I  thought  loved 
me;  as  soon  as  I  ceased  to  think  so  I  detached  myself 
from  them  suddenly."  And  he  adds:  "  I  liked  fairly 
well  to  talk  insipidities  to  women  and  to  do  them 


flDontesquieu.  129 

services  that  cost  me  little."  Le  Temple  de  Guide  is 
one  of  those  insipidities,  but  it  must  have  cost  him 
some  labour.  M.  Laine  relates  that  when  he  obtained 
permission  from  the  Secondat  family  to  make  re- 
searches among  Montesquieu's  papers,  he  found  in 
the  secretary,  v/hich  no  one  had  opened  since  the 
death  of  the  great  v^riter,  a  mass  of  rough  drafts  of  all 
his  love-letters.  The  author  of  the  Temple  de  Gnide 
worked  over  and  made  erasures  even  in  his  billets- 
doux,  and  we  feel  it  in  reading  that  tale.  What  in 
Montesquieu  is  vigour  and  nervous  energy  in  great 
things,  is  stiffness  in  little  ones.     He  has  no  grace. 

About  this  time,  Montesquieu  was  much  more  in 
his  true  line  when  he  delivered,  before  the  Academy 
of  Bordeaux  in  1725,  a  short  Discourse  in  praise  of 
Study  and  the  Sciences.  He  avenges  the  Sciences, 
having  questioned  their  utility  in  one  part  of  the 
Lettres  Persanes ;  he  asserts,  in  a  witty  and  original 
manner,  that  knowledge  being  gained,  the  intellectual 
result  thereof  is  often  the  indirect  and  distant  cause  of 
the  salvation  of  society.  For  instance,  if  the  Mexicans 
had  had  a  Descartes  before  the  landing  of  the  Span- 
iards, Fernando  Cortez  would  not  have  conquered 
them ;  for  the  awe  they  had  of  the  Spaniards  under 
the  idea  that  these  strangers  were  gods,  was  "only 
a  simple  effect  of  their  ignorance  of  a  principle  of 
philosophy."  Courage  was  never  lacked  by  either 
the  Mexicans  or  the  Peruvians,  "only  hope  of  success. 
Thus  a  false  principle  of  philosophy,  ignorance  of  a 

VOL.  I. — g. 


ISO  /IDontesquieu* 

physical  cause,  enervated  in  a  moment  all  the  forces 
of  two  great  empires." 

In  this  little  Discourse,  Montesquieu  speaks  magnifi- 
cently of  study,  and  of  the  motives  that  ought  to  lead 
us  to  it.  "The  first  is  the  inward  satisfaction  we 
feel  when  we  see  the  excellence  of  our  own  being  in- 
crease, and  know  that  we  render  an  intelligent  being 
more  intelligent."  Another  motive,  which  he  did  not 
go  far  from  himself  to  find, 

"  is,"  he  says,  "  our  own  happiness.  The  love  of  a  lady  is  almost 
the  only  eternal  passion  in  us;  all  others  quit  us  as,  little  by  little,  this 
miserable  machine  which  gives  them  to  us  nears  its  ruin.  .  .  .  We 
should  make  ourselves  a  happiness  that  can  follow  us  through  the 
ages;  life  is  so  short  that  we  ought  to  count  as  nothing  all  felicity 
that  does  not  last  as  long  as  ourselves." 

Finally,  he  gives  another  motive,  and  one  which  he 
feels  equally,  usefulness  to  the  public  and  to  the  world: 
"Is  it  not  a  noble  purpose  to  work  that  we  may  leave 
behind  us  men  more  fortunate  and  happier  than  we 
have  been  ?  "  Montesquieu,  through  integrity  of  heart 
and  guidance  of  his  intellect,  was  naturally  a  citizen 
of  the  race  of  the  Vaubans,  the  Catinats,  the  Turennes, 
the  L'Hopitals,  of  all  those  who  sincerely  desire  the 
welfare  and  honour  of  their  country  and  of  man- 
kind: "1  have  always  felt  an  inward  joy,"  he  says, 
"  when  a  law  has  been  made  which  served  the  com- 
mon welfare." 

The  Lettres  Persanes  ranked  him,  whether  he  would 
or  no,  among  literary  men.     He  felt  the  advantages  to 


/IDontesquleu,  131 

his  reputation,  and  tlie  hindrances  to  his  career.  A 
powerful  impulsion  moved  him  henceforth  to  fulfil  his 
destiny  as  a  writer,  and  he  acted  upon  it.  He  freed 
himself  from  his  bonds,  sold  his  office,  was  received,  in 
1726,  into  the  French  Academy  (although,  like  the  rest 
of  the  world,  he  laughed  at  it  before  he  belonged  to  it), 
and  undertook  his  travels  in  the  spring  of  1728,  begin- 
ning with  Germany  and  Hungary.  In  Vienna  he  saw 
much  of  Prince  Eugene;  arriving  in  Venice,  he  had 
the  pleasure  of  meeting  Bonneval,  who  had  not  yet 
passed  over  to  the  Turks;  he  visited  Turin,  Rome, 
Italy,  returning  by  way  of  Switzerland,  the  Rhine, 
and  Holland,  concluding  his  course  of  observations  in 
England  (October,  1729).  He  was  introduced  to  the 
latter  country  by  Lord  Chesterfield,  the  most  enlight- 
ened of  guides;  he  saw  all,  and  he  saw  well.  Before 
arriving  there,  he  had  travelled  on  the  continent  with 
an  Englishman,  Lord  Waldegrave,  and  had  said  al- 
ready :  ' '  There  are  no  men  of  true  common-sense  but 
those  who  are  born  in  England." 

A  few  Notes  from  his  journal  have  been  published, 
which  relate  to  his  stay  in  London.  He  remarks  that, 
in  his  time,  ambassadors  and  foreign  ministers  knew 
no  more  of  England  than  a  babe  of  six  months;  the 
freedom  of  the  press  misled  them:  "As  they  see  the 
devil  in  the  periodical  press  they  are  led  to  believe  that 
the  people  are  on  the  verge  of  rebellion ;  but  they  should 
bear  in  mind  that  in  England,  as  elsewhere,  the  people 
are  dissatisfied  with  the  ministers,  and  that  the  people 


132  /IDontesquicu. 

write  openly  what  is  only  thought  elsewhere."  Mon- 
tesquieu appreciates  this  liberty  "  which  every  man 
demands  and  enjoys  over  there — a  slater  has  the  news- 
paper brought  to  him  on  the  roof  and  reads  it  there." 
But  he  has  no  illusions  on  the  state  of  the  country  and 
its  institutions;  he  rightly  judges  the  corruption  of 
political  morals,  the  venality  of  consciences  and  of 
votes,  the  practical  and  calculating  side  of  things,  the 
fear  of  being  duped  which  leads  to  hardness.  He 
seems  almost  to  have  believed  that  a  revolution  was 
at  hand;  but  we  know  how  the  political  condition, 
very  debased  in  those  days  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  im- 
proved and  gained  new  vigour  under  Pitt.  Though 
he  saw  these  evils,  Montesquieu  thoroughly  appre- 
ciated the  advantages  that  compensated  for  them ;  he 
expresses  his  appreciation  thus:  "  England  is  at  present 
the  freest  country  that  there  is  in  the  world;  I  except 
no  republic.  ...  If  a  man  in  England  had  as 
many  enemies  as  he  has  hairs  upon  his  head,  no  harm 
could  come  to  him :  that  is  a  great  thing,  for  health  of 
soul  is  as  necessary  as  health  of  body." 

A  prophetic  glance  darts  like  a  flash  of  lightning 
through  the  following  sentence,  thrown  out  in  pass- 
ing, and  certainly  predicts  the  emancipation  of  English 
America:  "  I  do  not  know  what  will  happen  to  the 
many  inhabitants  sent  from  Europe  and  Africa  to  the 
West  Indies;  but  I  think  that  if  any  nation  is  aban- 
doned by  her  colonies,  England  will  be  the  first." 

I  confess,  in  all  humility,  even  if  I  do  a  wrong  to 


/iDontesquieu*  133 

my  sentiment  of  the  ideal,  that  if  we  could  have,  in  its 
consecutive  entirety,  Montesquieu'syoz/r;/^/  de  Voyage, 
the  whole  of  these  Notes  so  simple,  so  natural  in  their 
sincere  and  primitive  setting  forth,  I  should  prefer  the 
reading  of  them  to  that  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois,  and  I 
should  believe  them  to  be  more  useful. 

In  Montesquieu's  great  work  the  artist  counts  for 
much;  many  things  are  said  in  it  which  are  open  to 
doubt.  The  author-artist  is  there  in  presence  of  his 
subject,  of  his  vast  study;  he  wants  a  law,  he  searches 
for  it,  and  sometimes  he  creates  it.  From  the  accumu- 
lation of  texts  and  notes  which  he  has  brought  before 
him,  and  which  press  upon  him  and  almost  over- 
whelm him,  he  frees  himself,  he  chooses  his  course; 
his  work  springs  up.  Boldly,  sometimes  painfully, 
he  begins  his  Considerations und  his  perspective;  he 
fashions  them  to  suit  himself.  Was  it  not  he  who,  in 
the  privacy  of  his  own  study,  said:  "Histories  are 
false  facts  composed  on  true  facts." 

And  did  he  not  say,  still  further:  "  In  history  we 
see  men  painted  in  noble  portraits,  but  we  do  not 
find  them  to  be  what  we  see  them."  How  is  it,  then, 
when  the  spirit  of  history  alone  is  sought  ?  Men  are 
seen  at  too  great  a  distance;  the  human  stuff  which 
the  statesman  should  consider  too  often  disappears 
in  Montesquieu. 

I  spoke  just  now  of  the  useful:  Montesquieu  joined 
to  it  an  idea  of  the  beautiful.  He  had  a  sacred  pat- 
tern within  him;  he  raised  a  temple,  and  the  crowd 


134  /IDontesauieu. 

flocked  to  it.  But  did  he  not  set  up  in  it  certain 
idols  ? 

Let  us  lay  aside  regrets,  and  accept  respectfully  the 
unique  and  regal  form  of  his  Considerations,  which 
is  peculiarly  his  own;  a  form  born  of  a  mind  so  lofty 
and  so  firm,  and  bearing  the  imprint  of  a  mould 
which,  with  all  the  fine  accessories  that  characterised 
it,  will  not  be  met  with  again. 

On  his  return  to  France,  Montesquieu  retired  to 
his  chateau  of  La  Brede,  far  from  the  suppers  of  Paris, 
in  order  to  collect  and  arrange  his  thoughts;  he  re- 
mained there  two  years,  seeing  only  his  books  and 
his  trees.  He  was  full  of  England  when  he  arrived, 
and  had  to  repress  and  postpone  the  idea  of  writing  a 
book  on  that  original  Government,  so  unlike  our  own, 
which  tempted  him  much.  He  gave  the  preference 
to  his  Considerations  sur  les  Causes  de  la  Grandeur 
des  Romains  et  de  leur  Decadence  (1734),  which  has 
remained  the  most  classic  and  perfect  of  his  works; 
the  only  one,  indeed,  that  seems  to  have  been  cast  in 
a  single  mould  like  a  statue. 

The  works  of  Montesquieu  are  nothing  else  than  the 
philosophic  summing  up  and  the  ideal  review  of  his 
studies;  no  one  reasons  better  than  he  on  history  when 
he  has  closed  the  book  that  contains  the  narrative. 
He  expresses  the  thought  in  it;  he  gives  it  continuity, 
connectedness,  counsel;  and  that  which  makes  the 
beauty  of  what  he  says  is  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
put  forth.     He  advances  with  a  firm  step,  by  a  series 


/IDontesquieu.  135 

of  vivid  and  compact  reflections,  v^hich,  as  a  whole, 
have  the  grand  air;  his  wit  is  also  quick,  brief,  and 
is  aimed  high. 

This  style  of  seeing  and  speaking  was  marvellously 
well  suited  for  application  to  the  Romans.  To  judge 
of  the  book  of  Considerations  which  he  gave  to  them, 
we  should  have  to  examine  what  had  been  said  be- 
fore him  on  that  subject,  and  render  to  Machiavelli, 
Saint-Evremond,  Saint  Real,  that  which  is  their  due; 
and  as  for  form  we  should  have  to  place  the  historic 
discourses  of  Montesquieu  side  by  side  with  those 
of  Bossuet. 

The  nature  of  Montesquieu's  mind  is  so  completely 
that  of  reasoning  upon  history,  that  he  does  it  where 
there  is  no  call  for  it,  and  where  the  grounds  are  in- 
sufficient; as,  for  instance,  on  the  beginnings  of 
Rome.  Before  making  reflections  on  what  he  had 
read,  he  ought  to  have  asked  himself  whether  the  his- 
torians spoke  the  truth;  there  was  criticism  to  be 
made  on  the  books  and  on  the  traditions  that  were 
semi-fabulous.  Montesquieu  does  not  make  it.  From 
the  statement  that  Romulus  took  the  shield  of  the  Sa- 
bines,  which  was  large,  in  place  of  the  small  shield 
he  had  hitherto  used,  Montesquieu  jumps  to  the  con- 
clusion that  a  certain  custom  and  a  certain  policy  was 
in  practice  among  the  Romans  to  borrow  from  the 
vanquished  whatever  they  had  that  was  better  than 
their  own. 

It  is  not  until  the  period  of  Hannibal  and  the  Punic 


136  /IDontesquteu, 

wars,  that  Montesquieu's  thought  develops  with  ease, 
and  that  he  commands  his  whole  subject.  Chapter  VI, 
on  the  policy  of  the  Romans,  and  on  their  conduct  at 
the  submission  of  other  peoples,  is  a  masterpiece,  in 
which  prudence  and  majesty  are  combined;  the  grand 
style  begins  here,  never  to  cease  again.  In  speaking 
of  the  Romans,  Montesquieu's  language  becomes  like 
Latin;  it  takes  a  character  of  firm  conciseness  that 
brings  it  near  to  the  language  of  Tacitus  or  Sallust; 
there  is  study,  profound  combination,  effort,  as  with 
Sallust,  to  attain  to  propriety  of  expression  in  words, 
and  to  conciseness;  also  to  make  the  image,  as  in 
Tacitus,  both  magnificent  and  brief,  and  to  imprint  on 
the  whole  diction  something  grave  and  august. 

No  one  has  entered  more  fully  than  Montesquieu 
into  the  ideal  of  the  Roman  genius;  he  is,  by  inclina- 
tion, favourable  to  the  Senate,  and  something  of  a 
patrician  of  the  ancient  Republic,  It  should  be  re- 
marked that  he  who  spoke  so  admiringly  of  Alex- 
ander, Charlemagne,  Trajan,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  is 
less  generous  on  the  subject  of  Csesar;  at  any  rate,  he 
does  not  speak  of  him  as  if  he  were  under  a  sort  of 
enchantment,  as  he  does  of  those  other  great  mortals. 
He  is  angry  with  him  for  having  been  the  potential 
instrument  of  the  great  transformation  of  the  Roman 
world.  Montesquieu  (if  we  except  the  Lettres  Per- 
sanes)  always  used  noble  words  in  relation  to  Christ- 
ianity, and,  as  he  advanced  in  life,  he  more  and  more 
accepted  and,  so  to  speak,  espoused  its  benefits  in  all 


/iDontesqufeu.  137 

that  concerned  civilisation  and  humanity.  Neverthe- 
less, he  had  for  pure  Roman  nature  anterior  to  all 
Christian  influence,  for  the  stoical  Roman  nature,  a 
predilection  that  he  never  concealed.  The  suicides  of 
Cato  and  Brutus  inspired  him  with  reflections  in  which 
there  is,  perhaps,  a  sort  of  classic  idolatry,  and  even 
some  prestige:  "It  is  certain,"  he  exclaims,  "that 
men  have  become  less  free,  less  courageous,  less  in- 
clined to  great  enterprises  than  they  were  when, 
through  that  power  which  they  possessed  over  them- 
selves, they  could,  at  any  moment,  escape  from  every 
other  power."  He  says  this  again  in  the  Esprit  des 
Lois,  apropos  of  what  the  ancients  called  virtue: 
"When  they  had  that  quality  in  full  force,"  he  says, 
"  men  did  things  we  see  no  longer  in  these  days, 
and  which,  if  we  saw  them,  would  astound  our  little 
souls." 

Montesquieu  divined  many  things,  ancient  or  mod- 
ern; about  those  even  of  which  he  had  seen  the  least 
in  his  day — free  government,  civil  wars,  imperial  gov- 
ernment. One  might  make  a  piquant  extract  of  such 
predictions  or  allusions  taken  from  his  works.  Let  us 
beware  of  that  method  which  draws  to  self  a  great 
mind  and  turns  it  from  its  broad  and  special  path.  In 
all  that  Montesquieu  foresaw  and  divined,  one  thing  is 
lacking  to  make  him  wholly  himself,  and  to  complete 
the  education  of  his  genius, — he  did  not  foresee  the 
revolution.  He  did  not  believe  that,  in  our  day,  pro- 
scriptions or  wholesale  spoliations  would  be  possible. 


138  /IDontesguleu. 

Speaking  of  those  of  the  Romans,  he  says:  "We  can 
draw  this  advantage  from  the  smallness  of  our  fortunes 
— they  are  safer;  we  are  not  worth  enough  to  have 
our  property  torn  from  us."  Montesquieu  did  not 
conceive  that  there  could  be  a  day,  a  near  day,  when 
the  Clergy  in  a  body  would  be  dispossessed,  and  the 
Nobles  also,  in  a  great  measure;  when  the  chief 
heads  of  the  Parliament  of  Paris  were  to  fall  upon  the 
scaffold;  he  did  not  divine  a  1793. 

I  desired  to  read  Machiavelli  in  comparison  with 
Montesquieu;  the  latter  is  the  true  refutation,  or,  at 
any  rate,  the  true  corrective.  With  Machiavelli,  we 
are  always  closer  to  natural  corruption,  to  primitive 
cupidity;  Machiavelli  distrusts  himself;  Montesquieu 
does  not.  It  was  Machiavelli  who  said  that  there  is  in 
all  men  a  hidden,  vicious  inclination,  which  awaits 
only  the  opportunity  to  show  itself,  and  needs  all 
civil  laws,  supported  by  force  of  arms,  to  repress  it. 
Men,  according  to  him,  never  do  right  unless  they  can- 
not do  otherwise:  "And  when  they  have  that  choice, 
and  the  liberty  to  do  evil  with  impunity,  they  never 
fail  to  cause  confusion  and  disorder  everywhere." 
Machiavelli  is  convinced  that,  although  men  may  seem 
to  change  in  the  course  of  a  given  state  of  things,  fun- 
damentally they  do  not  change,  and,  certain  occasions 
returning,  we  find  them  absolutely  the  same.  Mon- 
tesquieu is  not  wholly  convinced  of  that  truth.  At 
the  opening  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois,  he  goes  so  far  as 
to  say  that  the  first  men  supposed  to  be  savages  and 


/IDontesquleu,  139 

children  of  nature,  were,  above  all,  timid,  and  wanted 
peace:  as  if  physical  cupidity,  want,  and  hunger,  the 
blind  consciousness  that  all  youth  has  of  its  own  force, 
and  "that  rage  for  domination  innate  in  the  human 
heart, "  would  not  engender  from  the  very  first,  conflict 
and  warfare.  This  criticism  is  fundamental,  and  bears, 
as  I  think,  on  the  whole  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois. 
Montesquieu  grants  too  much,  not  only  outwardly, 
but  secretly  in  his  own  mind,  to  the  decorum  of 
human  nature.  This  defect  in  Montesquieu  is  infin- 
itely honourable,  but  a  real  defect,  none  the  less. 
Admirable  explainer  and  classifier  of  the  past  and  of 
those  accomplished  things  that  have  no  present  con- 
sequences, he  is  likely  to  lead  into  error  those  who 
take  him  at  his  word  about  the  future.  Born  under  a 
mild  government,  living  in  the  midst  of  an  enlightened 
society,  where  the  memory  of  factions  was  far  distant, 
and  the  despotism  that  repressed  them  was  no  longer 
present,  or,  at  any  rate,  not  felt,  he  lightly  adjusted 
humanity  to  his  desire.  He  forgot  what  Richelieu  had 
known,  and  what  he  had  had  to  do,  and  Louis  XIV  also, 
at  the  beginning  of  his  reign.  He  had  need,  as  I  said 
before,  of  a  revolution  (were  it  only  such  a  Fronde 
as  Pascal  saw)  to  refresh  his  idea  of  the  reality  of 
human  nature,  that  idea  which  is  so  easily  covered  up 
in  calm  and  civilised  epochs. 

Machiavelli,  on  the  contrary  (let  us  not  forget  this  in 
a  comparison  of  the  two  geniuses),  lived  at  an  epoch 
and  in  a  country  where  there  were  daily,  for  Individ- 


I40  /IDontesQUieu. 

uals  as  well  as  for  cities,  thirty  ways  of  being  de- 
stroyed and  of  perishing.  Such  a  state  of  society 
naturally  keeps  men  on  the  alert,  and  gives  prudence 
to  all. 

I  return  to  the  ConsiddraUons,  from  which  I  have 
wandered.  Divided  between  the  old  Romans  of  the 
resistance  and  the  Roman  who  first  passed  the  Rubi- 
con, Montesquieu  does  not  understand  Caesar  to  the 
same  degree  that  he  understands  other  great  men;  he 
follows  him  with  a  sort  of  regret.  Montesquieu  had 
so  lived  in  idea  among  those  old  Romans,  that  he  had 
an  opinion  upon  them,  a  direct,  personal  impression, 
which  he  produces  sometimes  in  quite  a  naive  man- 
ner. Speaking  of  the  triumvir  Lepidus,  sacrificed  by 
Octavius:  "We  are  very  glad,"  he  exclaims,  "  to  see 
the  humiliation  of  this  Lepidus.  He  was  the  most 
wicked  citizen  in  the  Republic." — We  are  very  glad : 
Montesquieu,  when  writing,  lets  many  of  these  fa- 
miliar expressions  escape  him,  showing  his  intimacy 
with  his  great  subjects;  there  is  something  abrupt 
and  unexpected,  like  his  own  conversation,  in  these 
chapters.  He  says  of  Alexander:  "  Let  us  talk  about 
him  at  our  ease."  Elsewhere  he  says:  "1  request 
the  reader  to  pay  a  little  attention  " — I  see  in  this  the 
sort  of  gesture  of  an  eager  man  who  is  full  of  his  sub- 
ject, who  fears  in  talking  to  let  something  escape  him, 
and  so  grasps  the  arm  of  his  listener. 

Sometimes  the  gesture  is  grander,  less  familiar;  the 
orator   rises:     "Here  we  must   give    ourselves   the 


/IDontesguieu.  141 

spectacle  of  things  human  "...  and  he  goes  on 
to  enumerate  in  a  manner  worthy  of  Bossuet  all  that 
labour  of  the  Roman  people  and  their  Senate — the 
wars  undertaken,  the  blood  shed,  so  many  triumphs, 
so  much  wisdom  and  courage,  all  to  serve  finally 
"to  glut  the  happiness  of  five  or  six  monsters."  The 
whole  passage  is  pure  Bossuet. 

There  is  a  main  point,  nevertheless,  on  which  Mon- 
tesquieu differed  from  Bossuet.  Both  believed  in  a 
sovereign  counsel  in  human  things;  but  Bossuet  as- 
signs that  counsel  to  God  and  Providence,  who  has 
His  secret  purpose  and  object.  Montesquieu  assigns 
it  elsewhere: 

"  It  is  not,"  he  says,  "fortune  that  rules  the  world;  we  can  ask 
the  Romans,  who  had  a  continual  succession  of  prosperity  so  long  as 
they  governed  themselves  on  a  certain  plan,  and  an  uninterrupted  suc- 
cession of  reverses  when  they  conducted  themselves  on  another  plan. 
There  are  general  causes,  whether  moral  or  physical,  which  act  in 
each  monarchy,  raising  it,  maintaining  it,  or  flinging  it  down.  All 
events  are  subject  to  these  causes;  and,  though  the  chances  of  a 
battle,  which  is  a  particular  cause,  may  have  ruined  a  State,  there  was 
a  general  cause,  which  brought  about  that  this  State  should  perish  by 
a  single  battle.  In  a  word:  the  main  procedure  sweeps  along  with  it 
all  special  incidents.'' 

Montesquieu's  whole  philosophy  of  history  lies  in 
those  words;  and  we  must  agree  that  in  what  con- 
cerns the  Romans,  judging  things  after  the  event,  he 
seems  to  be  right.  The  Romans  certainly  do  lend 
themselves  wonderfully  to  the  application  of  this  linked 
system:  we  might  even  say,  in  truth,  that  they  came 


142  /IDontesqufeu, 

into  the  world  expressly  that  Montesquieu  might 
"  consider"  them. 

And  yet,  even  if  we  do  not  assign  directly  to  Provi- 
dence itself,  as  Bossuet  does,  the  counsel  and  law  of 
the  world  of  history,  it  seems  to  me  very  difficult  and 
very  perilous  to  find  it  in  this  succession  and  linking 
together  of  events  in  which  Montesquieu  flatters  him- 
self he  has  discovered  it.  Machiavelli,  on  this  point, 
seems  to  me  wiser  and  nearer  the  truth  than  Montes- 
quieu when  he  reminds  us,  even  in  the  midst  of  his 
reflections,  how  much  of  chance — that  is,  of  causes  to 
us  unknown— there  is  in  the  origin  and  in  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  facts  of  history  and  the  life  of  empires. 
Here,  again,  Montesquieu  suffers  from  living  in  his 
study  and  never  seeing  history  make  itself  before  him. 
Otherwise,  he  would  oftener  have  said  to  himself: 
"On  what  small  things  do  great  things  hinge  !" 
Cardinal  Alberoni  is  reported  to  have  made  a  criti- 
cism of  this  kind  upon  him:  "There  is  temerity,"  he 
said,  "in  seeking  for  the  causes  of  the  grandeur  and 
decadence  of  the  Romans  in  the  Constitution  of  their 
State.  Events  in  which  human  wisdom  had  the 
smallest  part  make  epochs  rather  than  consequences." 

Montesquieu  was  sixty  years  of  age  when  he  pub- 
lished his  Esprit  des  Lois  (end  of  1748).  During  the 
preceding  years,  when  he  was  not  at  his  chateau  of 
La  Brede,  he  lived  in  Paris,  where  he  was  much  in  the 
great  world,  especially  in  the  circle  of  the  Duchesse 
d'Aiguillon  and  of  Mme.  du  DelTand,  and  was  greatly 


/IDontesquieu.  143 

desired  everywhere;  a  simple,  kindly  man,  never  seek- 
ing to  shine.  "  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  frequent  the 
same  companies  that  he  did,"  says  Maupertuis;  "I 
have  seen  and  shared  in  the  eagerness  with  which  he 
was  always  awaited,  and  the  joy  with  which  we  saw 
him  arrive."  ''Who  would  not  love  this  man," 
wrote  the  Chevalier  d'Aydie  to  Mme.  du  Deffand, 
"this  good  man,  this  great  man,  original  in  his  works, 
in  his  nature,  in  his  manners,  and  always  worthy  of 
admiration,  or  else  adorable."  A  contemporary  of 
Montesquieu,  whom  I  scarcely  dare  quote  in  connec- 
tion with  him,  the  frivolous  Abbe  de  Voisenon,  gives, 
nevertheless,  a  few  pleasant  anecdotes  of  him,  and 
tells  them  well: 

"  He  was  such  a  good  father,"  he  says,  "  that  he  really  believed  in 
good  faith  that  his  son  was  worth  more  than  he.  He  was  a  kind  and 
firm  friend;  his  conversation  was  varied,  like  his  writings.  He  had 
both  gaiety  and  reflection ;  he  knew  how  to  argue  and  at  the  same 
time  he  conversed  well.  He  was  extremely  absent-minded;  he  started 
one  day  from  Fontainebleau,  telling  his  carriage  to  follow,  so  that  he 
might  go  on  foot  for  an  hour,  to  get  some  exercise;  he  went  as  far  as 
Villejuif,  supposing  he  was  not  yet  at  Chailly  (a  distance  of  48 
kilometres)." 

Garat,  in  his  life  of  Suard,  shows  us  Montesquieu  in 
his  domain  of  La  Brede: 

"  among  the  lawns,  the  fountains,  the  woods,  laid  out  in  the  Eng- 
lish fashion,  walking  about  from  morning  till  night,  a  white  cotton 
cap  upon  his  head  and  a  vine-prop  over  his  shoulder.  Persons  who 
came  to  present  to  him  the  homage  of  Europe  have  been  known  to 
ask  him  more  than  once,  taking  him  for  a  vine-dresser,  if  that 
were  Montesquieu's  chateau." 


144  /IDontesquieu. 

The  Marquis  d'Argenson,  who  judges  him  very 
truly,  says: 

"  As  he  has  immense  intelligence  he  makes  a  charming  use  of  what 
he  knows;  but  he  puts  more  intellect  into  his  books  than  into  his 
conversation,  because  he  does  not  seek  to  shine  and  will  not  take 
the  trouble  to  do  so.  He  keeps  the  Gascon  accent  which  he  brought 
from  his  native  region,  and  thinks  it  in  some  way  beneath  him  to 
correct  it.  He  takes  no  care  of  his  style,  which  is  much  wittier  and 
sometimes  more  vigorous  than  it  is  pure." 

Speaking  of  the  great  worl<:  that  Montesquieu  had 
had  in  preparation  for  twenty  years,  M.  d'Argenson 
goes  on  to  say: 

"  I  know  some  portions  of  it,  which  can  only  sustain  the  reputation 
of  the  author;  but  I  foresee  that,  as  a  whole,  it  may  fail,  and  that  we 
shall  find  more  agreeable  single  chapters  to  read,  more  clever  and 
seductive  ideas,  than  really  true  and  useful  instruction  on  the  way  that 
laws  should  be  drawn  up  and  put  in  force.  ...  I  know  the 
author  to  have  all  possible  intelligence;  he  has  acquired  vast  know- 
ledge, during  his  travels  and  also  during  his  retirement  in  the  country; 
but  I  again  predict  that  he  will  not  give  us  the  book  we  are  needing; 
although  we  shall  surely  find  in  the  one  he  is  preparing  many  profound 
ideas,  new  thoughts,  striking  images,  sallies  of  wit  and  genius,  and  a 
multitude  of  curious  facts — the  collecting  of  which  supposes  even  more 
taste  than  study." 

M.  d'Argenson  was  not  mistaken  in  one  direction, 
but  much  mistaken  in  another.  Montesquieu's  book, 
with  all  its  defects,  was  destined  to  quell  the  fears  and 
surpass  the  hopes  of  his  friends.  There  are  works  at 
which  we  must  not  look  too  closely;  they  stand  as 
monuments.  Mme.  du  Deffand's  remark,  "Cen'estpas 
r Esprit  des  Lois,  c'est  de  V esprit  sur  les  lois  "  ["It  is 
not  the  Spirit  of  the  Laws,  it  is  wit  and  humour,  about 


Montesquieu.  145 

the  laws"],  is  a  saying  wliicli  might  be  true  in  the 
private  society  of  Montesquieu,  but  ceases  to  be  so 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  public  and  of  the  world. 
The  public  sees  things  more  as  a  whole,  and  when 
there  is  a  breath  from  above  and  a  lofty  imprint  on  a 
work  it  takes  for  granted  that  the  author  is  right  on 
all  points,  and  yields  to  its  influence. 

It  was  of  this  same  Esprit  des  Lois  that  the  studious 
Gibbon  said,  speaking  of  his  studies:  "I  read  Grotius 
and  Puffendorf;  I  read  Barbeyrac;  I  read  Locke  and 
his  treatises;  but  my  delight  is  to  read  and  reread 
Montesquieu,  whose  vigour  of  style  and  boldness  of 
hypothesis  are  so  potent  to  rouse  and  stimulate  the 
genius  of  the  age."  And  Horace  Walpole,  speaking 
of  the  work  on  its  appearance,  wrote:  "1  consider  it 
the  best  book  that  was  ever  written — at  least  I  never 
learned  half  as  much  from  all  the  books  I  ever  read. 
There  is  as  much  wit  in  it  as  there  is  practical  know- 
ledge." This  last  point  has  become  doubtful  in  the 
present  day.  "There  is  no  book,"  says,  on  the  con- 
trary, a  recent  English  critic,  "that  can  be  cited  as 
having  done  more  for  the  human  race  at  the  time 
when  it  appeared,  and  from  which  a  reader  in  these 
days  can  draw  so  few  practical  ideas."  But  that  is 
the  fate  of  nearly  every  work  that  has  made  the  human 
mind  progress. 

Montesquieu,  at  the  period  of  its  publication,  ap- 
pears to  us,  in  his  correspondence,  in  all  the  suffer- 
ing and  extreme  fatigue  of  childbirth.     He  had  spent 


VOL.  1. — 10. 


146  /IDontesquieu. 

the  three  preceding  years  on  his  estate  (i 743-1 746), 
working  without  intermission.  His  eyes  gave  out; 
he  saw  but  little;  his  better  eye  was  afflicted  with 
cataract.  His  secretary  and  his  daughter  read  to 
him,  for  he  could  no  longer  read  for  himself.  "  1  am 
crushed  down  by  weariness,"  he  wrote  (March  31, 
1747) ;  "  I  hope  to  rest  for  the  remainder  of  my  days." 
The  idea  of  adding  to  his  work  a  digression  on  the 
origin  and  revolutions  of  civil  Laws  in  France  (which 
forms  the  last  four  volumes  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois), 
came  to  him  only  toward  the  last.  "1  thought  I 
should  kill  myself  these  three  months,"  he  said 
(March,  1748),  "trying  to  finish  a  piece  I  wished  to 
add,  which  will  be  a  book  on  the  origin  and  revolu- 
tions of  our  civil  Laws  in  France.  It  will  take  three 
hours  to  read;  but  I  assure  you  it  has  cost  me  such 
labour  that  my  hair  is  whitened  by  it."  The  book 
finished,  and  published  in  Geneva,  he  cries  out:  "But 
I  confess  the  work  has  nearly  killed  me;  I  shall  rest; 
I  shall  toil  no  more." 

Something  of  this  effort,  thus  vividly  described,  has 
crept  into  his  work.  The  first  book,  which  treats  of 
laws  in  general,  taking  them  in  their  broadest  accept- 
ation and  in  relation  to  all  beings  in  the  universe,  is 
very  vague;  and,  if  I  may  dare  to  say  so,  we  feel  in 
the  first  book  an  embarrassed  man,  just  as  we  feel  a 
wearied  and  rather  breathless  man  in  the  last.  At  the 
head  of  his  second  volume  (that  is,  half-way,  the 
edition  of  Geneva  being  printed  in  two  volumes),  he 


/iDontesquieu.  147 

intended  to  place  an  "  Invocation  to  the  Muses  "  in  the 
classic  style: 

"  O  Virgins  of  Mount  Pierus!  list  to  the  name  1  give  you!  Inspire 
me!  1  have  run  a  long  course;  I  am  crushed  beneath  sadness  and 
weariness.  Put  into  my  spirit  the  charm  and  the  sweetness  I  felt  in 
other  days,  which  desert  me  now.  Never  are  you  so  divine  as  when 
you  lead  wisdom  and  truth  by  pleasurable  ways. 

"  But,  if  you  will  not  soften  the  rigour  of  my  toil,  hide  the  toil 
itself!  Let  men  be  taught,  and  1  not  teach!  Let  me  reflect,  let  me 
feel,  and  then,  when  I  proclaim  new  things,  make  men  believe  that  I 
knew  nothing;  that  it  was  you  who  told  me  all     .     .     .  " 

The  whole  "Invocation  "  is  full  of  beauty;  and  the 
sentiment  of  the  delights  of  reason,  which  is  defined 
as  "the  most  perfect,  the  most  noble,  the  most  ex- 
quisite of  our  senses,"  rises  into  poesy.  The  friend  in 
Geneva,  who  was  charged  with  printing  the  work 
and  of  revising  the  proofs,  objected  to  this  hymn  as 
being  too  antique  for  a  modern  work,  and  begged 
leave  to  suppress  it;  which  request  Montesquieu,  af- 
ter some  opposition,  granted. 

No  one  will  expect  me  to  assume  the  airs  of  a  critic 
in  speaking  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois:  many  volumes 
would  be  needed  for  such  criticism,  and  the  work 
would  have  to  be  taken  book  by  book,  chapter  by 
chapter.  I  know  three  attempts  of  this  kind:  that  of 
M.  de  Tracy,  which,  in  spite  of  its  title,  is  a  logical 
refutation,  or  rectification,  rather  than  a  Commentaire  ; 
that  of  the  farmer-general  Dupin,  which  is  not  to  be 
despised;  and  I  have  seen  still  a  third  refutation  in 
manuscript,  written  by  Cardinal  de  Boisgelin,  former 


148  /IDontesquieu» 

Archbishop  of  Aix.  Montesquieu  can  be  stopped  at 
every  step  on  his  general  divisions  of  government,  on 
the  principle  he  assigns  to  each  of  them,  on  climates 
and  the  influence  he  attributes  to  them,  on  the  quota- 
tions with  which  he  strews  his  work.  It  often 
happens  that  he  quotes  incorrectly  and  for  effect,  as 
Chateaubriand  has  done  later;  that  happens  to  men 
of  imagination  who  make  use  of  erudition  without 
binding  themselves  down  to  it  or  mastering  it.  They 
take  note,  as  they  read,  of  witty  or  salient  passages, 
and  later,  when  composing,  they  take  infinite  pains 
to  turn  their  royal  road  past  their  illustrative  note, 
which  may  sometimes  be  merely  a  lively  anecdote. 
Montesquieu  makes  too  much  use  of  classic  incidents 
and  the  petty  equivocal  examples  they  afford  him. 
What  is  it  to  us,  I  ask,  how  Arribas,  King  of  the 
Molossians,  modified  an  absolute  government  ?  Why 
should  we  know  whether  such  or  such  police  measures 
were  adopted  by  the  Epidamnians,  and  what  conclu- 
sions could  we  reasonably  draw  from  them  ? 

The  frequent  breaks  in  the  Esprit  des  Lois,  the 
cutting  up  into  chapters — composed,  sometimes,  of  a 
single  sentence — also  show  either  a  certain  hesitation 
in  arrangement,  or  a  certain  pretension  to  authority. 
Buffon,  himself  the  very  opposite  to  this  style  of  writ- 
ing, explained  it  in  Montesquieu  by  physical  causes: 
"The  president,"  he  said,  "was  nearly  blind,  and 
he  was  so  eager,  that  half  the  time  he  forgot  what  he 
wanted  to  dictate,  so  that  he  was  obliged  in  the  end 


/IDontesaulem  149 

to  restrict  himself  to  the  smallest  possible  space." 
Montesquieu  himself  states  that  if,  when  talking,  he 
felt  he  was  simply  listened  to,  the  whole  subject 
seemed  to  vanish  from  before  him.  He  needed  an 
interlocutor  to  keep  him  going.  "As  for  conversa- 
tions of  reasoning,"  he  continued,  "where  the  sub- 
jects are  argued,  give  and  take,  back  and  forth,  1  get 
on  pretty  well."  The  Esprit des  Lois  gives  us  very 
often  the  "cut  and  thrust"  [coupe  et  recouped  of 
which  Montesquieu  speaks.  All  said,  however,  the 
book  remains  a  work  of  genius;  chapters  like  those 
on  Alexander  and  on  Charlemagne  compensate  us  for 
everything;  chapters  like  those  on  the  Constitution 
and,  especially,  on  the  political  morals  of  England 
(book  xix.,  ch.  27),  are  discoveries  in  the  world  of 
history.  We  feel  at  every  turn  in  Montesquieu  one 
of  those  rapid,  penetrating  minds  which  are  the  first 
to  stir  a  mass,  and  then  enlighten  it. 

1  have  stated  the  radical  defect  that  I  believe  is  in 
Montesquieu's  statesmanship:  he  puts  the  average  of 
humanity,  considered  in  its  natural  data,  rather  higher 
than  it  is.  It  is  not  ill  that  a  legislator  should  impel 
men,  even  by  means  of  a  little  illusion,  to  the  use  of 
all  their  faculties  and  all  their  virtue;  but  he  ought  to 
know  under  what  inward  conditions  that  is  possible, 
and  take  his  precautions  in  consequence.  Montes- 
quieu not  only  does  not  acquaint  his  reader  with  this, 
he  does  not  acquaint  himself.  In  picturing  the  gov- 
ernment of  England  as  so  noble  (which  he  had,  never- 


ISO  /IDontesqufeu, 

theless,  seen  closely  with  all  its  shadows),  he  seems 
never  to  have  asked  himself  what  effect  his  pictures 
might  have  in  France.  He  certainly  did  not  wish  for 
the  ruin  of  the  monarchy,  even  that  of  Louis  XV;  he 
considered  it  tempered  by  the  parliaments,  and  re- 
formable  in  itself:  "I  have  not,  by  nature,"  he  said, 
"a.  disapproving  spirit";  and  he  was  far  indeed  from 
having  a  revolutionary  one.  Very  different  from 
Jean-Jacques,  he  desired  that  every  man,  after  read- 
ing him,  should  have  "new  reasons  to  love  his  duty, 
his  prince,  his  country,  and  the  laws";  and  yet  he 
shows  nowhere  the  slightest  anxiety  as  to  the  result 
of  the  comparison  he  presents  to  the  imagination  of 
his  compatriots.  In  the  Esprit  des  Lois,  Montesquieu 
seems  to  forget  that  Frenchmen  remain  what  he  saw 
and  described  them  to  be  in  the  Lettres  Persanes ; 
and,  though  he  speaks  continually,  with  virtuous 
conviction,  of  moderate  government,  he  does  not 
sufficiently  tell  himself  under  his  breath  that  such 
moderation  is  not  one  of  the  qualities  that  can  be 
transplanted. 

No  doubt  a  certain  chapter  can  be  quoted  in  which 
he  warns  the  French  legislator  that  he  must  not  cor- 
rect too  much,  and  that  he  must  be  careful  not  to 
change  the  general  spirit  of  the  nation  (book  xix.,  ch. 
5);  he  compares  the  French  and  the  Athenians,  and 
makes  it  understood  that  Frenchmen,  with  all  their 
good  qualities  and  all  their  defects,  ought  to  remain 
what  they  are.     But  here,  again,  Montesquieu  is  like 


/IDontesqulcu.  151 

a  certain  Athenian,  who,  unintentionally,  spoke  so 
highly  of  the  Lacedaemonians  that  afterwards  he  cried 
in  vain  to  his  compatriots,  "Do  not  imitate  them! " 
they  all  rushed  in  rivalry  to  the  ways  of  Lycurgus. 

Being  Frenchmen,  when  we  have  read  much  of 
Montesquieu,  temptation  seizes  us: 

"  He  seems,"  says  a  sagacious  critic,  M.  Joubert,  "  to  teach  the  art 
of  making  empires;  we  think  we  are  learning  it  as  we  listen  to  him; 
and  every  time  we  read  him,  we  are  tempted  to  construct  one. 
Montesquieu  does  not  sufficiently  tell  his  readers:  '  You  are  not  states- 
men enough,  neither  am  I,  to  consider  history  with  any  such  reflec- 
tion, or  to  reason  on  it  so  easily  and  loftily.' — The  first  and  last 
word  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois  ought  to  be: — Statesmanship  cannot  be 
taught  by  books. " 

That  we  all— minds  which  form  the  commonalty 
of  the  world — should  fall  into  such  errors  from 
which  we  are  freed  in  after  years  by  experience,  is 
natural  and  simple, — nothing  more  so;  but  that  the 
legislator  and  the  genius  who  arises  as  our  guide 
should,  to  a  certain  point,  fall  into  the  same  errors  and 
seem  not  to  suspect  that  they  can  be  fallen  into, 
there  is  the  weak  side,  and  a  sort  of  imprudence. 
Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  who  feared  no  revolution, 
might  be  bold  and  foolhardy;  but  Montesquieu,  who 
does  not  desire  one,  was  he  sufficiently  foresighted  ? 

Let  us  take  the  Esprit  des  Lois  for  what  it  is:  a 
work  of  thought  and  civilisation.  What  is  finest  in  it 
is  the  man  behind  the  book.  We  must  not  ask  of  that 
book  more  method,  more  continuity,  more  precision, 
and    more   practicality    in    detail,   more    sobriety  in 


152  /IDontesquieu. 

imagination  and  in  erudition,  more  practical  counsels 
than  are  actually  in  it;  we  should  see  the  character- 
istics of  moderation,  patriotism,  and  humanity  that 
the  writer  wrought  into  all  his  noble  words  and  into 
many  of  his  magnanimous  utterances.  It  is  in  this 
sense  that  he  has  reason  to  speak  of  the  "  majesty  "  of 
his  topic,  and  to  add:  "  I  do  not  think  I  have  totally 
lacked  genius."  Everywhere,  and  in  those  noble 
portions  so  often  quoted,  we  feel  the  man  who  de- 
sires true  liberty,  the  true  virtue  of  the  citizen;  things 
of  which  he  had  seen  no  perfect  pattern  among  mod- 
erns, the  idea  of  which  he  had  formed  for  himself  in 
his  study  and  before  the  busts  of  the  ancients. 

The  Esprit  des  Lois  is  a  book  which  now  is  of  no 
other  use  than  that  noble,  perpetual  use  of  carrying 
the  mind  into  high  historic  regions,  and  giving  birth 
to  a  vast  array  of  fine  discussions.  In  the  order  and 
practice  of  free  and  moderate  governments  men  will 
continue  to  find  in  it  general  inspiration  and  memor- 
able texts.  As  for  its  oracles,  those  who  want  them 
may  seek  them.  The  circle  of  things  human,  which 
has  so  many  turns  and  twists,  and  of  which  we  can 
never  say  that  it  is  closed  for  ever,  seems  many  a  time 
to  have  given  both  right  and  wrong  to  Montesquieu. 
Very  clever  and  very  confident  would  he  be  who 
could  see  the  confirmation  of  any  certain  order  an- 
nounced by  him,  and  not  eternal  vicissitude. 

The  great  work  was  scarcely  published  before  it 
excited  clamours  which  were  only  the  signal  of  the 


fIDontesQuieu.  153 

revolution  it  was  about  to  produce  in  ideas.  At  first, 
its  success  was  decided  solely  among  the  elite  of 
minds.  "  I  hear,"  said  the  illustrious  author,  "a  few 
hornets  buzzing  around  me;  but  if  the  bees  only 
gather  a  little  honey  that  suffices  me."  Montesquieu 
lived  six  years  longer;  he  was  old  before  his  time. 
He  said  one  day  to  young  Suard  and  others  who  were 
listening:  "I  am  at  an  end;  1  have  fired  all  my  cart- 
ridges; all  my  candles  are  burnt  out."  About  the 
same  time,  he  wrote  this  melancholy  yet  serene  and 
lofty  thought :  "I  had  conceived  the  design  of  giving 
greater  breadth  and  depth  to  certain  portions  of  my 
Esprit,  but  I  have  become  incapable;  my  eyes  are 
weakened  by  reading,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  all  that 
remains  for  me  of  light  is  the  dawn  of  the  day  when 
they  will  close  for  ever." 

We  are  able  to  form  some  idea  of  Montesquieu's 
conversation.  In  a  Defense  which  he  deigned  to 
make  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois,  in  reply  to  a  Jansenist 
Gazette  (for  he  was  very  sensitive  to  criticism),  there 
is,  towards  the  end,  a  very  lively  page  which,  accord- 
ing to  d'Alembert,  represents  fairly  well  what  he  was 
as  a  conversationalist.  His  manner  of  talking  was 
eager,  rapid,  abrupt,  and  full  of  metaphor.  Marmontel 
remarks  that  he  always  "waited  till  the  ball  came  to 
him,  when  he  took  it  on  the  bound;  he  was  naturally 
witty."  Speaking  in  the  Defense  oi  narrow-minded 
critics  who  attacked  a  great  work  by  School  sophistries 
and  sect  scruples,  Montesquieu  adds: 


154  /IDontesquieu, 

"  That  style  of  criticism  is  the  one  thing  in  the  world  most  capable  of 
limiting  the  extent  and  diminishing  the  sum  of  national  genius.  .  .  . 
Nothing  stifles  knowledge  more  than  to  put  upon  all  things  a  profes- 
sor's robe.  .  .  You  cannot  have  your  mind  occupied  in  speaking 
well  when  you  are  terrified  by  the  fear  of  speaking  ill.  .  .  Such 
critics  come  and  clap  a  child's  cap  on  our  heads,  and  tell  us  at  each 
word  we  utter:  '  Take  care,  now;  you  want  to  speak  your  way,  but  I 
choose  you  to  speak  like  me.'  .  .  .  Just  as  we  begin  to  soar  they 
pull  us  by  the  sleeve.  Have  we  life  and  vigour  ? — they  will  take 
them  away  with  pin-pricks.  ...  Are  we  rising  to  any  height  ? 
here  come  those  men  with  their  foot-rule  or  their  tape-line,  calling  out 
to  us  to  come  down  that  they  may  take  our  measure." 


Add  to  this  picture  a  slight  Gascon  accent,  and  you 
might  thinly  it  was  Montesquieu  himself  who  was 
speaking.  Sometimes,  in  his  rolling  fire  of  imagery 
we  fancy  that  we  are  reading  Montaigne. 

"  His  modest,  free  demeanour,"  says  a  contemporary 
of  Montesquieu  (Maupertuis)  "  is  like  his  conversation. 
His  figure  is  well  proportioned.  Though  he  has  lost 
the  sight  of  one  eye  almost  entirely,  and  the  other  is 
very  weak,  no  one  would  perceive  it;  the  expression 
of  his  countenance  unites  sweetness  and  sublimity." 
His  long,  thin,  refined  face  was  a  type  of  the  region 
where  he  was  born,  the  Bordeaux  type;  his  well-cut 
profile  had  a  noble  aspect,  and  seemed  made  to  stamp 
a  medal. 

In  society,  Montesquieu  did  not  allow  himself  to 
yield  to  coteries  that  inclined  to  be  imperious;  we 
have  the  judgments  upon  him  of  Mme.  Geoflfrin  and 
the  Duchesse  de  Chaulnes,  that  is  to  say,  of  two  wo- 
men who  liked  to  get  much  out  of  those  who  sur- 


iTOontesQUieu,  15s 

rounded  them  and  to  play  with  them  as  they  pleased. 
Mme.  Geoffrin  paints  Montesquieu  as  an  absent- 
minded  man,  "  not  knowing  the  names  of  his  serv- 
ants, and  having  a  carriage  that  makes  as  much  noise 
as  a  hackney-coach,  etc."  Mme.  de  Chaulnes  says: 
"That  man  came  into  society  to  make  a  book;  he  re- 
membered all  that  was  told  to  him;  he  spoke  to  no 
strangers  unless  he  thought  he  could  get  something 
useful  out  of  them."  She  says  elsewhere:  "What  is 
he  good  for,  that  genius  ? "  Montesquieu  answers 
both  when  he  says  in  his  Pens^es:  "  I  like  the  houses 
Avhere  1  can  get  along  with  my  every-day  intellect." 
That  is  for  the  Duchesse  de  Chaulnes.  And  here  is 
for  Mme.  Geoffrin:  "  I  am  not  sorry  to  pass  for  ab- 
sent-minded; it  enables  me  to  risk  many  negligences 
Avhich  might  have  embarrassed  me." 

This  superior  spirit  which,  without  his  intending  it, 
•gave  birth  or  pretext  to  a  number  of  demi-Montes- 
quieus  both  supercilious  and  self-sufficient,  was  in 
him  modesty  itself: 

"  Modest  men,"  he  exclaims  in  the  Lettres  Persanes,  "  come,  that  I 
may  embrace  you  !  you  make  the  sweetness  and  charm  of  life.  You 
think  you  have  nothing,  and  I  tell  you  you  have  all.  You  think  you 
humiliate  no  one,  and  you  humiliate  every  one.  When  I  compare 
you  in  my  mind  with  the  arbitrary  men  I  see  everywhere,  1  fling  them 
from  their  tribune  and  lay  them  at  your  feet." 

He  had  the  kind-heartedness  to  think  that  he  had 
neglected  to  make  the  fortune  of  his  family  and  the 
glory  of  the  name.     "  1  confess,"  he  said,  "that  I  have 


156  /iDontesquieu, 

too  much  vanity  to  wish  that  my  children  should  one 
day  make  themselves  a  great  fortune;  it  would  only 
be  by  force  of  reason  that  they  could  then  support  the 
idea  of  me;  they  would  need  all  their  virtue  to  own 
me."  He  thought,  for  example,  that  if  one  of  his  sons 
became  minister,  chancellor,  or  something  of  that 
kind,  it  would  be  an  embarrassment  to  so  important 
a  personage  to  have  a  father  or  grandfather  like  him, 
who  had  made  nothing  but  books.  This  is  certainly 
an  excess  of  modesty,  or  a  remains  of  class  prejudice 
which  is  difficult  to  comprehend. 

Montesquieu  died  at  Havre,  February  10,  1755.  The 
circumstances  of  his  death,  and  the  obsessions  that  ac- 
companied it  have  often  been  related.  What  is  less 
known  is  that  his  funeral  was  attended  by  almost  no 
one.  Diderot  (so  Grimm  tells  us)  was  the  only  man 
of  Letters  who  followed  him  to  the  grave.  The  eight- 
eenth century  army  of  men  of  Letters  which  was 
soon  to  march  as  one  man  with  unanimity  and  prose- 
lytising zeal,  and  to  give  itself  a  final  rendezvous  at 
the  funeral  of  Buffon  (April,  1788),  was  not  yet  en- 
rolled, nor  even  astir  when  Montesquieu  died. 


at)ricnne  %c  Couvreur. 


157 


H^rfenne  Xe  Couvreun 

THERE  are  names  that  live,  and  of  which  we 
speak  at  any  moment  as  of  something  present. 
Utter  the  name  of  Heloise,  of  La  Valiiere, 
every  one  knows  them,  and  yet  is  glad  to  hear  them 
spoken  of  again.  We  desire,  we  hope  to  learn  some- 
thing more  about  them.  Brilliancy,  romance,  a  de- 
stiny of  ardour,  devotion,  and  tenderness,  of  pathetic 
misfortune, — all  this  attaches  to  these  poetic  figures, 
and,  transmitted  and  consecrated,  procures  for  them 
in  the  imagination  of  the  ages  a  perpetual  youth.  A 
sort  of  legend  forms  around  them  that  never  dies  out. 
If  we  knew  where  their  graves  were,  we  would  gladly 
go  each  year  piously  to  lay  fresh  wreaths  upon 
them. 

Somewhat  similar  is  the  case  of  Adrienne  Le  Couv- 
reur.  The  reasons  for  this  are  confused;  I  shall  try 
here  to  disentangle  a  few  of  them.  She  was  the  first 
actress  in  France  who  was  renowned  on  the  stage, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  received  with  consideration  in 
society.  She  was  loved  by  the  greatest  soldier  of  his 
time;  she  inspired  the  greatest  poet  of  the  day  with  his 
most  pathetic  elegy.     The  public  scandal  caused  by 

159 


i6o  BDrienne  %c  Couvreur. 

the  refusal  of  sepulture  to  her  body,  the  tragic  ex- 
planation and  frightful  suspicion  that  attended  her 
death,  have,  one  and  all,  cast  a  mysterious  interest  over 
her  fate,  and  made  her  a  victim  whom  we  feel  dis- 
posed both  to  love  and  avenge.  What  further  shall  I 
say  ?  She  is  of  those  who,  living,  had  charm  ;  and 
(what  is  given  to  very  few)  the  mysterious  essence 
of  that  charm  survives;  it  continues  to  operate  in  her 
memory. 

1  have  lately  witnessed  the  drama,  full  of  action,  in 
which  two  men  of  talent.  Scribe  and  Legouve  (one  of 
them  the  most  skilful  dramatic  engineer  of  our  age), 
have  reconstructed  and  brought  into  play  that  memory. 
They  have  conceived  the  role  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  great  actress,  the  Adrienne  of  our  day  [Rachel], 
suiting  it  to  her  by  many  happy  touches.  Neverthe- 
less, this  would  not  be  a  sufficient  reason  for  me 
to  meddle  in  matters  belonging  to  the  stage,  and  to 
encroach  upon  a  domain  which  is  not  mine,  if  I  had 
not  been  informed  of  new  documents,  original  writ- 
ings, relating  to  the  affair  of  the  poisoning,  and  also 
of  certain  unpublished  letters  that  do  honour  to  this 
woman,  as  remarkable  for  her  mind  and  her  integrity 
as  for  her  talent.  One  of  my  friends,  an  ardent  biblio- 
phile of  choice  tastes,  feeling,  in  respect  to  Mile.  Le 
Couvreur,  that  indefinable  charm  of  which  1  have 
spoken,  determined  to  make  careful  search  for  all  that 
could  be  further  learned  of  her,  and,  as  he  is  lucky,  he 
found  enough  to  add,  on  several  points,  to  what  was 


ADRIENNE  LE  COUVREUR. 
From  an  old  painting. 


at)rienne  %c  Coiivreur.  i6i 

known  already.  While  awaiting  this  coming  pub- 
lication, which  M.  Ravenel  is  preparing,  I  feel  myself 
permitted  to  pause  for  an  instant  on  this  subject  of 
Adrienne  Le  Couvreur,  as  not  inappropriate  at  the 
present  moment. 

Adrienne  was  born  about  the  year  1690,  at  Fismes, 
between  Soissons  and  Reims.  Her  father,  a  hatter  by 
trade,  moved  his  family  to  Paris  in  1702,  and  lodged 
in  the  faubourg  St. -Germain,  not  far  from  the  Comedie 
Fran^aise.  This  neighbourhood  offered  the  child 
opportunities  to  strengthen  a  passion  for  the  theatre 
that  was  born  in  her:  "Many  of  the  bourgeois  of 
Fismes,"  relates  the  Abbe  d'Allainval,  whom  I  cannot 
help  quoting  for  these  beginnings  of  her  career,  "  told 
me  that,  from  childhood,  she  took  pleasure  in  reciting 
verses,  and  that  they  often  enticed  her  into  their  houses 
to  listen  to  her.  The  Demoiselle  Le  Couvreur  was 
one  of  those  extraordinary  persons  who  are  self- 
made."  When  she  was  fifteen,  she  arranged  with 
some  young  people  of  the  neighbourhood  to  act 
Polyettcte  and  the  little  comedy  of  Deuil  by  Thomas 
Corneille.  These  performances  took  place  at  a  gro- 
cery in  the  rue  Ferou.  They  were  talked  of  in  the 
quarter.  Adrienne  played  Pauline,  and  was  not  ill 
seconded  by  her  comrades;  one  of  them  distinguished 
himself  by  the  truth  of  his  acting.  Mme.  Le  Jay  lent 
the  little  troop  her  house,  rue  Garanciere;  society 
rushed  thither;  it  is  said  that  the  doors,  guarded  by 
eight    Swiss,    were    forced    in.      The    tragedy   was 

VOL.  I. II. 


1 62  Bt)rienne  %c  Cou\?reur» 

scarcely  over  when  the  police  entered  and  forbade 
the  performance.     The  afterpiece  was  not  acted. 

Thus  ended  these  unlicensed  performances.  Adri- 
enne  played  some  time  longer  within  the  precincts  of 
the  Temple,  under  the  protection  of  the  grand  prior 
of  Vendome;  we  know  that  she  took  lessons  from  the 
comedian  Le  Grand;  after  that,  we  lose  sight  of  her. 
She  travelled  about  the  provinces  and  their  adjoin- 
ing countries,  acting  in  the  theatres  of  Lorraine  and 
Alsace.  She  must  have  returned  more  than  once  to 
Paris,  but  she  did  not  appear  there  in  public  till  the 
spring  of  1717,  when  she  made  her  debut  in  the  roles 
of  Monime  and  Electra;  from  that  first  day  she  proved 
herself  an  accomplished  actress.  It  was  loudly  declared 
that  she  began  where  other  great  actresses  ended. 
She  was  then  about  twenty-five  years  old,  and  con- 
tinued on  the  stage  for  thirteen  years  longer. 

In  an  art  that  leaves  behind  it  so  few  traces,  it  is 
difficult,  when  judging  from  the  distance  of  years  to 
do  more  than  repeat  the  testimony  of  contemporaries, 
which  we  have  almost  no  means  of  verifying.  In  this 
case,  praises  were  unanimous,  all  agreeing  on  the 
same  points:  "  To  her  is  given  the  glory,"  said  Le 
Mercure,  March,  1730,  "of  having  introduced  simple, 
noble,  natural  declamation,  and  of  having  discarded 
sing-song."  She  also  sought  more  truth  and  correct- 
ness in  costumes;  she  was  the  first,  for  instance,  to 
bring  into  use  court  dresses  in  the  parts  of  queen  and 
princesses.      She  made  this  innovation  when  playing 


a^rienne  Xe  Couvreur.  163 

Queen  Elizabeth  in  the  Comte  d' Essex.  In  assuming 
the  queen's  dress,  she  also  assumed  her  tone — that  is, 
she  spoke  the  part  naturally,  without  ostentation,  with- 
out feeling  herself  obliged,  like  other  actresses,  to  make 
up  for  what  was,  until  then,  lacking  in  the  costume 
by  an  affected  solemnity.  The  audience  seemed  to 
see  "a  princess  acting  for  her  pleasure."  She  also 
played  comedy,  properly  so-called,  but  with  less 
freedom  and  resourcefulness:  she  never  shone  except 
in  a  few  comic  parts.  Her  true  domain,  her  incom- 
parable glory  was  in  pathos.  "She  had  the  art  of 
entering  into  the  greatest  passions  to  the  degree  ne- 
cessary to  express  them  and  make  them  felt  in  full 
force." 

It  was  said  of  Mile.  Champmesle  that  she  had  so 
sonorous  a  voice  that  if,  when  she  declaimed,  a  door 
were  opened  at  the  farther  end  of  the  theatre,  she 
could  be  heard  in  the  Cafe  Procope.  I  doubt  if  this 
would  have  been  the  case  with  Mile.  Le  Couvreur, 
but  her  voice  was  penetrating,  true  in  tone,  and 
subtle;  she  sustained  weak  verses,  and  gave  their  full 
value  to  the  finest.  "  She  had  not  many  tones  in  her 
voice,  but  she  knew  how  to  vary  them  to  infinity, 
adding  inflexions,  some  vehemence,  and  I  know  not 
what  that  was  expressive  in  her  air,  her  face,  and  all 
her  person,  which  left  nothing  to  be  desired."  She 
excelled  in  gradation,  in  the  passing  from  one  tone 
to  another,  which  so  fully  expresses  the  vicissitudes 
of  passion.    The  memory  still  lasts  of  certain  passages 


i64  HC)rienuc  %c  Couvreur, 

in  her  roles  of  Berenice,  Elizabeth,  Electra,  in  which 
she  moved  all  hearts  by  these  contrasted  and  affecting 
tones.  No  one  ever  understood  so  well  the  art  of 
mute  scenes,  the  art  of  listening  well,  and  of  continuing 
to  act  with  her  person  and  her  expressive  attitude 
while  others  spoke. 

It  does  not  appear  that,  off  the  stage,  her  beauty 
was  very  striking  or  extraordinary;  but  she  had  nat- 
ural elegance  and  harmony.  We  know  her  portrait 
by  Coypel,  who  painted  her  in  mourning  garments, 
holding  her  urn  as  Cornelie.  Le  Mercure  shows  her 
far  more  as  she  was  naturally, 

"  perfectly  well  made,  of  medium  height,  with  a  noble  and  composed 
bearing;  the  head  and  shoulders  well  placed,  the  eyes  full  of  fire,  the 
mouth  beautiful,  the  nose  slightly  aquiline,  with  much  charm  in  her 
air  and  in  her  manners;  no  embonpoint,  but  the  cheeks  rather  full,  and 
with  features  all  well  fitted  to  express  grief,  joy,  tenderness,  terror, 
and  pity." 

Much  soul,  much  tender  feeling,  constant  study,  a 
passionate  love  for  her  art,  all  contributed  to  make  her 
that  ideal  of  a  great  tragedian  which,  until  then, 
seems  never  to  have  been  fully  realised.  Mile. 
Duclos  was  the  representative  of  the  declamatory 
school  only;  and  though  Mile.  Desmares  and  the 
Champmesle  had  great  and  noble  qualities,  they  cer- 
tainly never  attained  to  the  full  perfection  of  Adrienne 
Le  Couvreur.  When  the  latter  came  she  had  no 
other  model  than  her  own  taste;  she  created. 

In  the  various  arts,  but  especially  in  that  of  the 


HDrienne  Xe  Couvreur.  165 

stage,  there  have  been,  at  all  times,  two  manners 
opposing  each  other;  the  manner  of  the  official  school 
(Conservatoire  or  Academy),  and  that  of  original  talent 
— the  manner  that  declaims  or  chants,  and  that  which 
speaks.  We  find  these  two  schools  already  in  oppo- 
sition and  at  war  at  the  dawn  of  our  stage;  the  troop 
of  Moliere  against  that  of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne. 
Remember  the  Impromptu  de  Versailles,  in  which  this 
conflict  is  so  well  defined.  Moliere  wished,  even  in 
tragedy,  that  the  parts  should  be  spoken  naturally, 
hmnanly ;  the  difficulty  lay  in  harmonising  perfect 
dignity  and  nobleness  with  this  naturalness,  which 
on  the  stage  can  be  only  a  cultivated  and  conscious 
naturalness.  Moliere,  when  acting,  succeeded  im- 
perfectly in  doing  this  in  tragic  parts,  for  which  nature 
had  not  fitted  him.  Baron,  his  pupil,  formed  wholly 
by  his  teaching,  put  those  lessons  into  practice.  Mile. 
Le  Couvreur  had  seen  Baron  when,  old  but  still  ex- 
cellent, he  returned  to  the  stage  in  1720;  but  she  had 
not  awaited  that  sight  to  realise,  in  her  own  way, 
Moliere's  poetic  idea,  and  to  unite  in  herself  the 
lofty,  pathetic,  and  natural  qualities  of  a  great  tragic 
actress. 

It  is  related  that  when  she  first  appeared  in  Paris 
and  was  received  with  eager  applause,  a  man,  seated 
alone  in  the  corner  of  a  box,  was  not  carried  away  by 
the  universal  enthusiasm,  but  merely  said  from  time 
to  time,  at  a  few  points:  "  That  is  good,  that,"  as  if 
he  meant  it  to  be  understood  that  the  rest  was  not 


1 66  a^rienne  %c  Coupreur. 

equally  good.  This  incident  was  told  to  the  actress, 
who  desired  to  know  the  recalcitrant  auditor,  and  in- 
vited him,  in  a  charming  note,  to  dine  alone  with 
her.  The  man  was  Du  Marsais,  the  philosopher  and 
grammarian,  a  simple,  naive  man,  little  accustomed  to 
society,  frank,  and  inexorably  accurate.  Before  sitting 
down  at  table,  he  asked  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  to  recite 
a  few  pieces;  as  he  listened  to  her  in  attentive  silence, 
he  ejaculated  now  and  then:  "That  is  good,  that." 
Urged  to  give  the  reasons  for  his  criticism,  he  made 
no  difficulty  about  telling  them;  and  a  long  friendship 
ensued,  in  the  course  of  which  the  modest  philoso- 
pher spared  no  useful  advice;  advice  which  related  to 
truth,  naturalness,  and  propriety  of  expression.  He 
desired  that  no  more  value  should  be  given  to  words 
than  was  required  by  the  situation.  Such  counsel 
found  in  Mile.  Le  Couvreur's  honest  intelligence  a 
ground  prepared  for  it. 

This  relation  of  Du  Marsais  to  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  is 
partly  that  which  the  authors  of  the  new  play  ascribe 
to  Michonnet;  and  this  reminds  me  that  the  actor 
who  plays  that  part  so  admirably,  M.  Regnier,  is  pre- 
paring for  publication  a  study  on  the  talent  and 
dramatic  invention  of  Mile.  Le  Couvreur.  I  shall 
therefore  not  dwell  upon  them  here.  Michonnet's 
part  is  a  double  one:  he  is  a  true,  sincere,  disinterested 
counsellor,  as  Du  Marsais  was  in  real  life;  but  he  is, 
besides,  the  lover,  equally  true,  sincere,  devoted  to 
the  point  of  sacrifice;  and  that  half  of  the  role  we  find 


a&rfenne  Xe  Couvreur.  167 

no  less  filled  by  another  friend  of  Mile,  Le  Couvreur, 
M.  d'Argental. 

Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  in  her  early  youth,  had  many 
adorers,  of  whom  we  have  the  right  to  name  a  few, 
Voltaire,  for  instance.  Speaking  to  Thieriot  of  the 
touching  verses  forced  from  him  by  his  indignation 
over  the  burial  of  the  celebrated  actress,  Voltaire  says 
that  his  anger,  too  keen  perhaps,  is  "  pardonable  in  a 
man  who  was  her  admirer,  her  friend,  her  lover,  and 
who  is,  besides,  a  poet."  This  is  sufficiently  clear. 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur  had  two  daughters  who  survived 
her.  One,  born  in  Strasburg,  daughter  of  M.  Kinglin, 
at  that  time  chief  magistrate  or,  as  they  say  there,  prae- 
tor of  that  city ;  she  is  often  mentioned  in  Voltaire's 
letters.  The  other  daughter  was  born  in  Paris,  and 
was  baptised  at  Saint-Eustache,  September  7,  17 10,  as 
the  "daughter  of  Philippe  Le  Roy,  officer  of  Mon- 
seigneur  le  Due  de  Lorraine,  and  Adrienne  Le  Cou- 
vreur"; she  married,  in  1730,  Francoeur,  musician  at 
the  Opera.  The  learned  mathematician,  of  that  name, 
was  of  this  family. 

But  the  great  passion  of  Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  that 
which  put  an  end  to  the  levities  of  her  early  life,  was 
her  love  for  the  Comte  de  Saxe,  who  came  to  Paris  for 
the  first  time  in  1720,  and  fixed  his  residence  there  in 
1722.  From  the  moment  when  she  first  loved  him, 
and  in  spite  of  his  infidelities,  which  he  never  denied 
himself,  it  is  plain  that  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  never  after- 
wards considered  herself  free.     Passionately  beloved 


1 68  HDrienne  %c  Couvreur. 

by  young  d'Argental,  she  did  all  she  could  to  cure 
him.  She  did  not  take  half-measures,  which  are  more 
fitted  to  excite  and  allure  that  which  they  are  sup- 
posed to  repel;  her  action  was  straightforward,  loyal, 
without  arriere-pensee;  it  was  that  of  an  honest  man. 
She  wrote  to  him: 


"You  wish,  against  all  sorts  of  reasons,  that  I  should  write  to  you. 
How  is  it  that  with  so  much  intelligence  you  are  so  little  master  of 
yourself?  What  can  you  gain  but  the  pleasure  of  exposing  me  to 
disagreeable  annoyances,  not  to  say  worse  ?  I  am  ashamed  to  quar- 
rel with  you  when  you  fill  me  with  pity,  but  you  compel  me  to  do  so. 
Be,  I  beg  of  you,  more  reasonable;  and  say  to  him  whom  you  have 
commissioned  to  torment  me,  that  he  must  give  me  a  respite;  for  the 
last  four  days  he  has  hardly  left  me  in  peace  for  a  moment.  I  will 
show  you  clearly  the  impropriety  of  this  conduct  the  first  time  that 
accident  brings  .us  together,  and  1  shall  have  no  difficulty  in  making 
you  agree  that  you  do  wrong.  Adieu,  unhappy  child — you  fill  me 
with  despair." 


Hearing  that  d'Argental's  mother,  Mme.  de  Ferriol, 
thought  of  sending  her  son  away  even  as  far  as  St. 
Domingo,  for  fear  that  he  might  be  induced  to  make 
her  an  offer  of  marriage.  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  attempted 
to  reassure  her.  She  went  to  see  Mme.  de  Ferriol, 
and  as  the  reception  she  met  with  did  not  encourage 
her  to  speak  freely,  she  wrote  her  a  letter,  noble  in 
tone,  admirable  in  feeling,  the  letter  of  a  woman  who 
seeks  to  reconcile  natural  duties  with  the  conventions 
of  social  life.  In  writing  this  letter,  dictated  by  her 
heart,  she  did  not  suspect  the  moral  height  on  which 
it  placed  her  ;  that  height  is  great,  especially  when  we 


HDrienne  %c  Couvreur.  169 

think  of  the  sort  of  woman  (worthy  sister  of  Mme. 
de  Tencin,  and  that  is  enough  to  say)  to  whom  it  is 
addressed: 


(Paris,  March  22,  1721).  "Madame,  I  cannot  hear  without  being 
keenly  grieved,  of  the  uneasiness  that  you  feel,  and  the  plans  which 
that  uneasiness  has  caused  you  to  form.  I  might  add  that  1  have  no 
less  pain  in  hearing  that  you  blame  my  conduct.  But  1  write  to  you 
less  to  justify  that  conduct  than  to  assure  you  that  in  future  it  will  be, 
in  the  matter  that  interests  you,  whatever  you  may  prescribe  to  me. 
On  Tuesday  last  1  asked  permission  to  see  you,  that  1  might  speak 
with  you  in  private  and  ask  your  orders.  Your  greeting  destroyed  my 
zeal,  and  1  found  I  had  nothing  left  but  timidity  and  sadness.  It  is 
necessary  that  you  should  know  my  true  sentiments,  and,  if  I  may 
be  permitted  to  say  something  further,  that  you  should  not  disdain  to 
listen  to  my  very  humble  remonstrances  if  you  do  not  wish  to  injure 
Monsieur  your  son.  He  is  the  most  respectful  child  and  the  most 
honest  man  I  have  ever  seen  in  my  life.  You  would  admire  him,  if  he 
did  not  belong  to  you.  Once  more,  madame,  deign  to  join  with  me 
in  destroying  a  weakness  which  irritates  you,  and  of  which  I  am  not 
the  accomplice,  whatever  you  may  think.  Do  not  show  him  either 
contempt  or  bitterness;  I  would  rather  take  upon  myself  all  his  hatred, 
in  spite  of  the  tender  friendship  and  reverence  that  I  feel  for  him,  than 
expose  him  to  the  slightest  temptation  to  displease  you.  You  are  too 
interested  in  his  cure  not  to  work  for  it  anxiously,  but  you  are  too 
much  so  to  succeed  alone,  and,  above  all,  by  combating  his  inclination 
with  authority,  and  by  painting  me  to  him  in  disadvantageous  colours, 
however  true  they  may  be.  Surely  this  passion  is  extraordinary,  since 
it  has  lasted  so  long  a  time  without  the  slightest  hope,  in  the  midst  of 
rebuffs,  and  in  spite  of  the  journeys  you  have  made  him  undertake 
and  of  eight  months  in  Paris  without  seeing  me,  and  without  knowing 
whether  I  would  ever  receive  him  again  in  my  life.  1  believed  him 
cured;  and  in  that  belief  I  consented  to  see  him  during  my  late  illness. 
It  is  easy  to  believe  that  his  friendship  would  please  me  better  than  this 
unhappy  passion,  which  surprises  as  much  as  it  flatters  me,  but  of 
which  I  do  not  wish  to  take  advantage.  You  fear  that  in  seeing  me 
he  will  neglect  his  duties;  and  you  carry  that  fear  so  far  as  to  take 
these  violent  resolutions  against  him.  In  truth,  madame,  it  is  not  right 
that  he  should  be  made  unhappy  in  so  many  ways.     Do  not  add  to 


I70  HC)rtenne  Xe  Coupreur. 

my  unkindnesses  to  him;  seek  rather  to  compensate  him  for  them; 
let  all  your  resentment  fall  upon  me,  and  let  your  kindness  give  him 
compensation. 

"  1  will  write  to  him  whatever  you  wish  ;  1  will  never  see  him  again 
if  you  desire  it  ;  but  do  not  threaten  to  send  him  to  the  end  of  the 
world.  He  can  be  useful  to  his  country  ;  he  can  be  the  delight  of  his 
friends  ;  he  will  crown  you  with  satisfaction  and  fame  ;  you  have 
only  to  guide  his  talents,  and  let  his  virtues  act.  Forget  for  a  time 
that  you  are  his  mother,  if  that  quality  is  opposed  to  the  kindness  that 
I  ask  you  on  my  knees  to  give  him .  In  short,  madame,  you  will  see 
me  retire  from  the  world,  or  love  him  with  love,  rather  than  suffer  him 
in  future  to  be  tormented  about  me,  and  by  me." 

M.  d'Argental  had  no  knowledge  of  this  letter  at 
the  time  it  was  written.  It  was  not  until  sixty  years 
later,  when  he  was  over  eighty,  that  one  day,  looking 
over  some  old  papers  relating  to  his  mother,  he  found 
it.  It  was  read  to  him,  and  then,  for  the  first  time, 
did  he  truly  know  the  heart  of  his  early  love. 

Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  as  everything  we  know  of  her 
proves  to  us,  was  not  only  a  person  of  talent,  she  was 
a  woman  distinguished  by  intellect,  by  heart,  and  by 
all  the  solid  qualities.  She  had  need  of  them  to  raise 
her  from  the  inferior  social  position  in  which  actresses 
were  still  held  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  cent- 
ury. Moliere,  by  force  of  genius  and  wit,  Baron  by 
his  talent  aided  by  his  self-conceit,  had  raised  the 
profession  of  actors  in  the  social  world,  in  which  they 
now  maintained  themselves  on  a  footing  of  respecta- 
bility. But  the  women,  even  those  of  talent  like  the 
Champmesle,  had  never  been  able  to  win  any  degree 
of  consideration;  they  remained  in  the  very  lowest 
position  socially.     People  went  to  the  Champmesle's 


B&rienne  %c  Couvreur.  171 

house;  they  lauded  her  in  gallant  verses,  like  those  of 
La  Fontaine;  they  lived  with  her  on  familiar  terms, 
but  she  had  nothing  that  could  be  called  a  salon. 
She  never  succeeded  in  gaining  that  social  esteem 
which  is  marked  by  such  nicety  of  shade,  the  esteem 
that  Ninon  secured.  Racine,  the  tender  and  once 
lover-like  Racine,  speaks  of  Champmesle,  on  hearing 
of  her  death,  as  "that  poor  unfortunate,"  in  a  tone 
that  the  most  austere  devotion  would  not  have  dic- 
tated to  any  honourable  man  of  the  world  in  after 
years.  The  century  that  was  soon  to  be  that  of  Vol- 
taire did  not  long  permit  such  inequalities  among  the 
different  interpreters  of  art,  and  Mile.  Le  Couvreur 
was  the  first,  not  to  protest  but  (what  was  far  better) 
gently  to  work  a  revolution  by  the  charm  of  her 
influence. 

She  had  much  to  do,  as  we  can  well  believe.  An 
actress  was  at  the  beck  and  call  of  the  whole  privi- 
leged class.  It  was  in  speaking  to  Mile.  Le  Couvreur 
that  Lord  Peterborough  said:  "  Come!  show  me  much 
love  and  much  wit."  What  he  said  crudely,  like  the 
queer  original  that  he  was,  many  others  felt  they  had 
the  right  to  think,  if  they  had  the  politeness  not  to  say 
it.  By  intelligence,  good  sense,  a  sentiment  of  pro- 
priety and  modesty.  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  obtained  a 
position  in  society  which,  at  that  epoch,  no  other  act- 
ress had  any  right  to  claim.  She  was  the  first  to  win 
for  actresses  in  France  the  position  of  Ninon ;  that  is 
to  say,  the  position,  as  a  woman,  of  an  honourable 


172  HDrienne  Xe  Couvreur. 

man,  receiving  the  best  company  of  men,  and  even 
of  women,  when  the  latter  were  prompted  by  curios- 
ity and  possessed  a  little  courage,  "It  is  an  estab- 
lished fashion  to  dine  or  sup  with  me,"  she  writes, 
"because  it  has  pleased  a  few  duchesses  to  do  me 
that  honour."  That  honour  had  its  burdens,  and  en- 
tailed subjection,  as  she  herself  wrote: 

"  If  my  poor  health,  which  is  feeble,  as  you  know,  causes  me  to  re- 
fuse or  miss  a  party  of  ladies  whom  I  should  otherwise  have  met,  but 
who  only  think  of  me  out  of  curiosity,  or,  if  1  may  dare  to  say  so,  out 
of  vogue  (which  enters  into  everything),  one  says  :  'Just  see  how  she 
affects  importance.'  Another  adds  :  '  It  is  because  we  are  not  titled! ' 
If  I  am  serious,  for  one  cannot  always  be  gay  among  a  quantity  of 
people  whom  one  scarcely  knows,  they  say  :  '  So  that  is  the  woman 
who  has  so  much  intellect!  Don't  you  see  how  she  disdains  us  ;  we 
ought  to  know  Greek  to  satisfy  her.'  '  She  goes  to  Mme.  Lambert's,' 
says  another;  '  does  n't  that  solve  the  enigma  for  you  ? '  " 

Mme.  de  Lambert  was  the  friend  of  Fontenelle,  of 
La  Motte,  and  of  Mairan.  People  accused  her  of  keep- 
ing an  office  for  intellect,  because  her  house  was 
"nearly  the  only  one,"  says  Fontenelle,  "that  was 
preserved  from  the  epidemic  disease  of  card-playing; 
the  only  one  where  persons  could  meet  to  converse 
together  reasonably,  and  even  wittily  on  occasion." 

The  salon  of  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  was  among  the 
few  where,  on  certain  days,  wit  and  reason  had  a 
chance  to  meet.  She  lived  in  a  little  house  in  the  rue 
des  Marais-Saint-Germain,  in  which  it  wa's  said  that 
Racine  had  once  lived,  and  which  was  afterwards 
occupied  by  Mile.   Clairon.      A  considerable  fortune 


aC)rienne  %c  Coupreur.  173 

for  those  times,  amounting,  some  said,  to  more  than 
three  hundred  thousand  livres,  gave  her  an  honourable 
independence.  The  days  on  which  she  was  not  too 
much  invaded  by  duchesses  and  persons  of  fashion, 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur  took  pleasure  in  receiving  her 
friends. 

"  My  vanity,"  she  said,  "  does  not  find  that  great  numbers  are  any 
compensation  for  real  merit  in  people.  1  do  not  care  to  shine;  I  have 
a  hundred  times  more  pleasure  in  saying  nothing  and  listening  to  good 
things;  I  like  better  to  find  myself  in  a  society  of  wise  and  virtuous 
persons  than  to  be  made  giddy  with  insipid  praises  that  are  showered 
upon  me  at  random .  It  is  not  that  I  lack  gratitude,  or  the  desire  to 
please;  but  I  find  that  the  approbation  of  a  fool  is  not  flattering,  except 
in  a  general  way,  and  that  it  becomes  a  burden  when  it  must  be  paid 
for  by  special  and  perpetual  affability." 

So  she  deprived  herself,  as  much  as  she  could,  of  the 
approbation  of  fools,  and  clung  to  that  of  her  friends. 
These  friends,  honest  men,  whom  she  preferred  to  all, 
were  Fontenelle,  Du  Marsais,  Voltaire,  d'Argental,  the 
Comte  de  Caylus,  the  Abbe  d'Anfreville,  the  Comte 
de  Saxe,  and  certain  intimate  friends  of  the  latter,  such 
as  the  Marquis  de  Rochemore.  To  these  we  may  add 
a  few  clever  women,  of  good  social  position  but  not 
fine  ladies  overmuch,  such  as  Mme.  Berthier,  for  in- 
stance. This  I  imagine  to  have  been,  on  certain  days, 
the  persoiuiel  of  a  supper  at  Mile.  Le  Couvreur's,  and 
there  was  surely  a  less  well-assorted  one  in  high  places. 
The  tone  that  prevailed  in  this  company  could  not 
have  resembled  that  which  we  see  established  towards 
the  middle  of  the  century,  at  the  suppers  of  Mile. 


174  a^rienne  %c  Couvreur. 

Quinault.  The  Memoirs  of  Mme.  d'Epinay  make  us 
spectators  of  the  latter.  The  conversation  there  is  racy, 
but  free  to  licentiousness,  which  fact  does  not  prevent 
it  from  becoming  at  times  declamatory.  That  was 
not  the  habitual  tone  of  a  house  where,  it  is  true, 
Voltaire  had  free  entry  and  permitted  himself,  no 
doubt,  his  usual  sallies,  but  where  Fontenelle  was 
enjoyed  and  welcomed;  it  was  not  the  tone  of  Mile. 
Le  Couvreur's  suppers.  She  has  left  us  a  charming 
portrait  of  Fontenelle,  which  paints  herself  as  fully 
as  it  does  the  philosopher  she  knew  so  well  how  to 
appreciate. 

"  Persons  of  no  account,"  writes  Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  "  do  too  little 
honour  to  those  of  whom  they  speak  for  me  to  dare  to  say  publicly 
what  I  think  of  M.  de  Fontenelle;  but  I  cannot  deny  myself  the  pleas- 
ure of  privately  painting  him  such  as  he  appears  to  me, 

"  His  countenance  proclaims  at  once  his  intellect:  an  air  of  society, 
pervading  his  whole  person,  makes  him  agreeable  in  all  his  actions. 

"  Charms  of  mind  sometimes  exclude  essential  things.  Unique  in 
his  own  line,  he  also  combines  all  that  can  make  him  loved  and 
respected — integrity,  uprightness,  equity,  compose  his  character.  A 
lively  and  brilliant  imagination,  subtle  and  delicate  turns  of  mind, 
novel  and  always  happy  expressions,  are  its  ornaments.  A  pure  heart, 
straightforward  proceedings,  uniform  conduct,  principle  in  all  things; 
exacting  little,  justifying  others,  seizing  always  the  good,  abandoning 
evil  so  quickly  that  one  might  doubt  if  he  perceived  it.  Difficult  to 
acquire,  but  more  difficult  to  lose.  Firm  in  friendship,  scrupulous  in 
love;  the  man  of  honour  is  nowhere  neglected.  Fit  for  the  most  deli- 
cate occupations,  those  that  delight  learned  men;  modest  in  his  speech, 
simple  in  his  actions,  the  superiority  of  his  merit  shows  itself,  but  he 
never  makes  it  felt.     .     .     ." 

Here  we  find  that  excellent  and  restrained  language 
which  1  have,  more  than  once,  tried  to  characterise, 


abrienne  Xe  Couvreur.  175 

the  language  of  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  cent- 
ury, remarkable  especially  for  its  turns  of  phrase,  its 
clearness,  and  its  accuracy ;  a  language  formed  on  that 
of  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  which  all  intelligent  French- 
women— Mme.  de  Caylus,  Mme.  de  Staal,  Mile.  Aisse 
— were  henceforth  to  write.  The  personal  taste  of 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur  comes  to  light,  without  her  know- 
ledge, in  this  portrait  ;  we  feel  what  qualities  she 
prized  above  all  others  and  desired  in  the  men  who 
formed  her  circle.  "Difficult  to  acquire,  more  dif- 
ficult to  lose":  that  is  the  true  motto  of  friendship; 
and  it  is  a  merit  that  Mile.  Le  Couvreur's  noble  heart 
places  it  far  above  hasty  caprices  and  passing  passions. 
I  find,  in  one  of  the  unpublished  letters  written  by  her 
to  a  friend  of  whose  name  we  are  ignorant,  words 
which  confirm  this  sincere  and  habitual  sentiment  of 
her  heart.  This  friend  had  departed  suddenly,  with- 
out telling  her,  and  without  writing  to  her.  She  com- 
plains, with  grace  : 

"  I  wish,"  she  writes,  "to  inform  you  of  my  principles.  When  it  is 
a  question  of  writing  to  my  friends,  I  never  thini<  that  I  need  wit  or 
intellect  to  reply  to  them  ;  my  heart  suffices  me  for  all.  I  listen  to  it, 
then  I  act ;  and  I  have  always  found  it  well  for  me.  People  take  me 
such  as  1  am,  or  leave  me.  All  the  art  i  know  is  that  of  not 
throwing  myself  at  their  head  for  whatever  sentiments  there  may  be. 
1  seek  honesty  first  even  in  my  slightest  intimacies.  When  the  graces 
are  added  1  know  how  to  feel  them,  nature  having  given  me  an  ad- 
mirable instinct  to  perceive  them.  Experience  of  the  world,  time,  and 
a  little  reason  have  convinced  me  that  great  indulgence  is  necessary 
in  life  ;  but  those  who  need  it  the  least  lose  nothing  with  me.  I  give 
them,  on  the  spot,  all  the  esteem  and  admiration  that  they  seem  to 
me  to  deserve.     And  when  they  honour  me  with  some  kindness,  you 


176  H^cienne  %c  Couvreuc. 

can  readily  see    that   gratitude  is  added    to    those   sentiments,  and 
assuredly  I  have  never  been  ungrateful.     .     .      ." 

While  she  desires  friendship,  she  rather  dreads  en- 
thusiasms ;  she  is  always  afraid  that  another  senti- 
ment may  slip  in,  and  she  speaks  of  it  in  a  tone  fitted 
to  convince  her  friend  that  she  wishes  to  remain  as 
she  is  : 

"  1  am,"  she  writes,  "  of  a  sex  and  a  profession  in  whiih  this  hon- 
ourable sentiment  is  not  expected  ;  it  is  the  only  one  I  desire,  the 
only  one  that  flatters  me  ;  and  1  dare  to  think  myself  worthy  of  it  by 
the  manner  in  which  1  feel  it;  I  will  even  add,  by  that  in  which  I 
have  inspired  it  more  than  once.     .     .     ." 

Though  at  an  age  when  women  are  still,  if  they 
choose,  able  to  appear  young,  she  did  not  hesitate  to 
speak  of  advancing  years,  and  what  they  would 
bring  with  them  "  of  attentions  and  duties  which  ten 
years  hence  friends  may  have  to  pay  to  an  old  friend." 
She  wishes  they  should  consider  all  that  in  advance, 
and  grow  accustomed  to  the  idea  ;  she  is  the  first  to 
propose  it  frankly  :  "Let  us  go  honestly,"  she  said, 
"towards  friendship."  The  great  preservative  that 
she  had  against  all  fresh  weakness  was  that  her  heart 
was  filled  ;  she  loved  ;  she  trembled  for  an  absent  one 
in  the  midst  of  dangers,  whose  return  she  was  await- 
ing with  impatience  : 

"A  person  long  expected,"  she  writes,  October  23,  1728,  "arrives, 
at  last,  to-night,  and,  according  to  appearances,  in  pretty  good  health. 
A  courier  has  come  on  before  him,  because  his  carriage  broke  down 
thirty  leagues  from  Paris.  A  post-chaise  has  been  sent  down,  and  to- 
night he  will  be  here." 


HDdenne  Xe  Couvreur.  177 

It  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  wlio  that  person  thus 
awaited  was  :  Maurice  de  Saxe  was  returning,  at  that 
date,  from  Courlande  to  Paris. 

The  last  year  of  Mile.  Le  Couvreur's  life  was  dis- 
turbed by  a  strange  incident,  which  gave  rise  to  a 
rumour  of  poisoning.  I  shall  try  to  disentangle  the 
story  from  the  popular  tales  that  were  mixed  up  with 
it,  v/hich  can  be  read  in  the  Lettres  of  Mile.  Aisse,  and 
in  the  Journal  of  the  lawyer,  Barbier.  About  the 
month  of  July,  1729,  a  little  humpbacked  man,  a 
painter  of  miniatures,  the  Abbe  Bouret,  son  of  a  treas- 
urer of  France  at  Metz,  went  twice  to  the  house  of 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  and,  not  finding  her,  left  a  letter  in 
which  he  said  that  he  had  very  important  things  to 
reveal  to  her  ;  and  that  if  she  wished  to  hear  them, 
she  had  only  to  come  on  the  morrow  to  a  certain  soli- 
tary alley  in  the  Luxembourg,  which  he  described  ; 
when  there,  she  would  recognise  him  by  three  taps  he 
would  give  on  his  hat,  and  she  could  then  hear  all. 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  after  taking  the  advice  of  friends, 
went  to  the  place  indicated  with  a  companion.  There 
she  found  the  little  humpback,  who  told  her  in  sub- 
stance, that  a  Court  lady,  whose  miniature  he  was 
painting,  had  proposed  to  him  to  gain  access  to  Mile. 
Le  Couvreur  as  a  painter,  and  so  give  her  a  philter 
that  would  drive  the  Comte  de  Saxe  from  her  ;  that 
two  masked  persons,  to  whom  he  was  referred  for 
the  details  of  the  plan,  told  him  that  the  drug  to  be 
given  was  not  a  philter,  but  a  poison  ;  and  with  that 

VOL.  I. 12. 


178  H&rienne  Xe  Couvreur. 

object  poisoned  tablets  would  be  deposited,  on  a  cer- 
tain day,  in  a  yew-tree  in  the  Tuileries  gardens  ;  that 
the  abbe  was  to  take  them  from  there,  and  if  he  gave 
them  to  Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  he  should  be  guaranteed  a 
pension  of  600  livres  and  a  payment  down  of  6000 
livres.  The  abbe  added  that  he  had  pretended  to 
consent  to  everything,  and  now  came  to  ask  what 
he  should  do. 

Mile.  Le  Couvreur  did  not  at  first  think  this  story  as 
improbable  as  it  now  seems  to  us.  The  Comte  de 
Saxe  was  not  faithful  by  nature,  though  sincerely 
attached  to  Mile.  Le  Couvreur.  He  had  tried  for 
some  time  to  make  advances  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Bouillon,  but  without  success.  He  had  also  taken  a 
fancy  to  an  Opera  singer.  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  thought 
vaguely  that  she  might  have  something  to  fear  either 
from  the  hotel  de  Bouillon  or  from  the  Opera.  The 
abbe  saw  her  thought,  and  indicated  the  hotel  de 
Bouillon  as  the  quarter  whence  the  danger  came. 
She  gave  him  a  second  appointment,  consulted  her 
friends,  and  the  Comte  de  Saxe  himself.  It  was  de- 
cided that  the  abbe  should  seem  to  lend  himself  to  the 
affair,  and  take  the  tablets  from  the  Tuileries.  All  was 
done  as  proposed.  The  abbe  found  the  tablets,  and 
took  them  to  Mile.  Le  Couvreur  ;  they  were  then 
taken  to  M.  Herault,  lieutenant-general  of  police. 
The  Abbe  Bouret  was  arrested  at  once,  and  the 
tablets  were  analysed.  The  analysis,  made  by 
GeofTroy,   of   the    Academy    of    Sciences,    showed 


B^ricnne  Xe  Couvreur.  179 

nothing  decisive,  I  have  before  my  eyes  the  proces- 
verbal,  dated  July  20,  1729.  Some  of  the  tablets 
seemed  doubtful;  but  the  quantity  v^as  not  sufficient, 
says  the  chemist,  to  decide  the  experiments  and  base 
a  judgment. 

Meantime,  the  affair  became  known,  and  it  was 
openly  said  in  public  that  the  Duchesse  de  Bou- 
illon had  attempted  to  poison  Mile.  Le  Couvreur. 
The  Abbe  Aunillon  du  Gue  de  Launay,  a  friend  of  the 
Bouillons,  in  Memoirs  more  interesting  than  known, 
which  he  left  behind  him,  tells  us  that  he  was  the  first 
to  inform  the  duchess  of  the  odious  rumour,  in  order 
that  she  might  take  steps  to  refute  it.  He  describes 
to  us  in  natural  language  the  astonishment  and  pain 
she  showed  at  the  news.  This  Duchesse  de  Bouillon, 
I  may  remark  in  passing,  was  not  the  princess  of  that 
name,  born  Sobieska,  who  appears  in  the  drama  of 
the  Theatre  Fran^ais,  but  her  young  mother-in-law, 
born  in  Lorraine.  The  Due  de  Bouillon  was  at  once 
informed  ;  and  the  whole  family  were  roused  to  in- 
dignation. The  lieutenant  of  police  was  summoned 
and  lectured  for  not  having  at  once  pushed  the  affair 
to  an  end,  and  for  having  allowed  the  Abbe  Bouret  to 
go  at  large.  The  latter  was  re-arrested  and  put  in 
Saint-Lazare.  Being  questioned,  he  maintained  his 
statement.  Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  touched  by  the  impris- 
onment of  a  man  who,  though  he  might  have  intended 
to  dupe  her  and  insinuate  himself  into  her  house, 
might  also  have  sincerely  desired  to  serve  her,  wrote  a 


i8o  aorienne  %c  Couvrcur* 

letter  full  of  dignity  and  humanity  to  the  lieutenant  of 
police  : 

"  I  have  talked  with  him,  and  made  him  talk  often  and  for  along 
time,"  she  said  of  the  young  man,  "  and  he  always  answered  con- 
nectedly and  intelligently.  It  is  not  that  I  wish  what  he  said  to  be 
true;  I  have  a  hundred  times  more  reason  to  wish  he  may  be  crazy. 
Ah  !  would  to  God  I  had  only  to  solicit  his  pardon  !  But  if  he  is  in- 
nocent, think,  monsieur,  what  an  interest  I  ought  to  take  in  his  fate, 
and  how  cruel  this  uncertainty  is  to  me.  Do  not  consider  my  profes- 
sion or  my  birth,  deign  to  see  my  soul,  which  is  sincere  and  laid  bare 
in  this  letter.      .     .     ." 

Matters  remained  thus  for  some  months  The  abbe, 
still  a  prisoner  in  Saint-Lazare,  persisted  in  his  state- 
ment. The  Bouillon  family  urged,  or  seemed  to  urge, 
an  investigation  of  the  affair,  when  suddenly  Mile.  Le 
Couvreur,  whose  health  had  failed  very  much  during 
the  past  year,  was  carried  off  by  violent  inflamma- 
tion of  the  bowels  on  Monday,  March  20,  1730,  after 
playing  Jocaste  in  GEdipe  and  Hortense  in  Le  Floreniin 
three  days  earlier.  This  sudden  death  renewed  all 
the  reports  of  poison;  though  it  was  certainly  most 
improbable  that  persons  suspected  for  several  months 
should  have  chosen  this  time  to  renew  their  attempt 
— supposing  them  capable  of  so  doing.  The  cause  of 
the  death  was  explained  more  naturally  by  a  dose  of 
ipecacuanha  taken  by  mistake.  We  have  the  proces- 
verbal  of  the  post-mortem  examination  ;  it  indicates 
nothing  but  a  most  acute  inflammation.  Voltaire, 
who  was  present,  and  in  whose  arms  Mile.  Le  Couv- 
reur died,   says  that  all   the    rumours  then   current 


B&rienne  %c  Coiivreur,  iSi 

were  without  foundation  ;  and  his  testimony  would 
be  decisive  did  we  not  know  that  he  was  systematic- 
ally opposed  to  all  ideas  of  poisoning. 

To  finish  on  this  obscure  and  delicate  point, — after 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur's  death,  a  retraction  of  his  first 
statement,  and  a  species  of  exoneration  of  the  Duchesse 
de  Bouillon,  were  obtained  from  the  Abbe  Bouret, 
still  a  prisoner  at  Saint-Lazare.  But  this  document, 
dictated  evidently  by  the  need  of  the  unfortunate  man 
who,  in  ending  it,  puts  the  whole  blame  on  his 
"distracted  brain,"  would  be  of  little  real  value  if  a 
friend  of  the  duchess,  an  honourable  man,  the  Abbe 
Aunillon,  whom  I  have  already  mentioned,  had  not 
given  us  still  another  and  quite  different  explanation. 
He  thinks  that  a  Court  lady,  whom  he  has  in  his  eye 
but  does  not  name,  a  person  of  consideration,  jealous, 
and  no  doubt  a  rival  of  the  Duchesse  de  Bouillon,  and 
fully  as  powerful  as  she,  contrived  the  whole  plot,  not 
to  poison  Mile.  Le  Couvreur,  but  to  throw  suspicion 
on  the  unfortunate  duchess,  whose  name  she  used, 
and  thus  ruin  her  reputation.  The  abbe  adds  that  the 
duchess,  being  on  her  death-bed,  seven  years  later, 
made,  in  presence  of  her  friends  and  her  whole  house- 
hold, a  general  confession  of  her  faults  and  her  trans- 
gressions (of  which  there  were  many),  but  that  she 
firmly  protested  her  entire  innocence  in  the  matter  of 
Mile.  Le  Couvreur. 

All  things  combined  at  one  and  the  same  moment  to 
excite  and  inflame  the  public  interest  around  the  cofFm 


i82  H^rienne  Xe  Coupreur. 

of  the  beloved  actress.  The  rector  of  Saint-Sulplce, 
Languet,  refused  to  allow  her  body  to  be  buried  in 
consecrated  ground.  She  had  made  a  considerable 
bequest  in  her  will  to  the  poor  of  his  parish.  On  the 
day  of  her  death  she  said  to  a  vicar  who  came  to  see 
her:  "Do  not  be  uneasy,  monsieur  I'abbe;  1  know 
what  brings  you  here ;  I  have  not  forgotten  your  poor 
in  my  will."  True,  it  is  added,  that,  turning  towards 
a  bust  of  the  Comte  de  Saxe,  she  exclaimed:  "There 
is  my  universe,  my  hope,  my  gods!  " 

M.  de  Maurepas  wrote  to  the  lieutenant  of  police 
that  it  was  not  Cardinal  de  Fleury's  intention  to  enter 
into  any  question  of  ecclesiastical  sepulture,  but  to 
leave  the  affair  to  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  and  to  the 
rector  of  Saint-Sulpice.  "  If  they  persist  in  refusing  it 
to  her,  as  seems  likely,"  he  wrote,  "  she  must  be  car- 
ried away  at  night  and  buried  with  the  least  possible 
scandal."  The  body  was  therefore  taken  by  night, 
in  a  hackney-coach ;  and  two  street  porters,  guided  by 
a  single  friend,  M.  de  Laubiniere,  buried  her  in  a  de- 
serted wood-yard,  in  the  faubourg  Saint-Germain, 
near  the  present  south-east  corner  of  the  rue  de  Cre- 
nelle and  the  rue  de  Bourgogne.  The  faithful  d'Argen- 
tal,  whom  she  had  made  her  residuary  legatee,  did 
not  think  that  he  compromised  his  character  as  a 
magistrate  by  accepting  that  confidential  mission,  and 
he  thereby  honoured  himself  in  public  opinion.  The 
legacy  was  in  reality  a  trust,  for  Mile.  Le  Couvreur 
left  two  daughters  to  be  thus  provided  for. 


Ht)rienne  Xe  Couvreur.  183 

Voltaire  had  one  of  those  spasms  of  sorrow  and 
sensibility  of  which  he  was  so  capable,  and  it  was  then 
that  he  wrote  those  touching  lines  which  every  one 
knows  by  heart: 

"  She  is  no  more — and  now  she  is  criminal  ! 
She  charmed  the  world — for  that  you  punish  her.     .     .     ," 

But  here  I  will  not  expatiate,  lest  I  seem  to  fall  into 
declamation  in  speaking  of  one  whose  chief  merit,  on 
the  stage  and  in  her  life,  was  to  be  truth  itself  and 
nature,  the  very  opposite  of  declamation.  Those  two 
simple  words  sum  up  the  character  of  Adrienne  Le 
Couvreur. 


tDoItaire* 


1S5 


IDoltaire. 

THE  truth  about  men,  as  about  things,  is  difficult 
to  discover,  and  when  discovered  it  is  no  less 
difficult  to  preserve.  What  is  our  present 
judgment  of  Voltaire?  We  are  still  disputing,  still 
contradicting,  still  flinging  that  name  at  one  another 
like  a  weapon  of  war  ;  making  it,  as  ever,  a  rallying 
signal  or  a  rock  of  offence.  1  ask  permission,  having 
now  to  speak  of  him,  to  hold  to  my  own  impressions, 
gained  long  before  recent  debates,  and  to  restate  the 
rather  complex  judgment  which  I  have  tried,  for  the 
last  twenty  years,  to  form  upon  him,  maturing  and 
rectifying  it  constantly  ;  wishing  to  detract  in  no  wise 
from  a  great  mind,  so  essentially  French  in  its  fine 
qualities  and  in  its  defects  ;  but  still  less  wishing  to 
make  of  one  who  respected  nothing,  or  nearly  no- 
thing, a  personage  of  moral  and  philosophical  author- 
ity, a  religion  in  himself,  or  an  idol. 

There  is  no  originality  or  singularity  in  this.  Three 
generations  have  now  succeeded  one  another  in  which 
a  rather  considerable  number  of  minds,  starting  from 
very  different  points  of  view,  have  formed  a  fairly  just 
idea  of  Voltaire,  but   an   idea   which   has   remained 

187 


i88  IDoItaire. 

among  them  behind  closed  doors,  and  has  always 
been  questioned  by  the  oncoming  youth — for  young 
men,  at  the  moment  when  they  enter  active  life,  seek, 
unconsciously,  in  the  celebrated  men  of  the  past  and 
in  the  great  names  in  vogue,  precedents  for  their 
own  passions  or  systems,  vehicles  for  their  own  train 
of  ideas  and  ardour.  Whether  they  espouse  or  exalt 
them,  whether  they  accept  them  in  part  or  insult 
them,  it  is  themselves  whom  they  see  through  those 
noted  men  ;  it  is  their  own  idea  they  bow  to  and  ex- 
tol; it  is  the  idea  that  opposes  theirs  which  they  flout 
and  depreciate.  To  see  things  as  they  are,  and  men 
as  they  have  been,  is  the  part  of  an  intellect  that  has 
grown  unbiased — an  effect,  I  fear,  of  refrigeration. 

I  have  said  that  for  three  generations  Voltaire  has 
been  soundly  appreciated  by  certain  minds,  although 
their  judgments  came  to  no  purpose,  and  were  never 
consolidated  or  established  among  us.  Let  us  con- 
sider. In  his  lifetime,  he  was  perfectly  known  and 
judged,  for  his  good  qualities  as  well  as  for  his  defects, 
for  his  fine  and  charming  gifts  as  well  as  for  his  follies 
and  his  detestable  perversities,  by  the  persons-  of  his 
society,  and,  up  to  a  certain  point,  by  his  friends. 
Whosoever  will  gather  from  the  correspondences 
of  that  day  the  sayings  and  judgments  upon  him  of 
Mme.  Du  Deffand,  President  Henault  and  others  of 
that  set,  Frederick  the  Great,  President  de  Brosses, 
Mme.  de  Crequy,  will  gain  an  idea  of  the  true  Voltaire, 
not  a  man  indorsed,   idealised,   and  ennobled  by  the 


VOLTAIRE. 
After  the  drawing  by  Ferney. 


Uoltatre.  189 

spi-''  of  party,  but  one  to  whom  the  full  glory  of  his 
talents  is  given.  But  this  opinion  of  certain  clear- 
sighted and  well-informed  witnesses  has  been  little 
known.  The  remote  distance  at  which  Voltaire  kept 
himself  in  his  last  years,  the  reverence  he  inspired 
from  afar  in  his  precincts  of  Ferney  to  the  new  genera- 
tions who  had  seen  nothing  of  his  petulant  youth,  the 
concert  of  praises  which  his  clever  and  indefatigable 
old  age  excited  in  France  and  in  Europe — all  this  pre- 
pared the  apotheosis  in  which  he  himself  was  extin- 
guished, and  against  which  very  few  protestations 
were  then  raised. 

Nevertheless,  he  had  against  him,  at  bottom,  even 
in  the  philosophical  party  then  triumphant,  the  dis- 
ciples and  votaries  of  Rousseau,  whom  he  had  mis- 
conceived and  insulted.  After  the  Revolution  had 
completed  its  work  of  ruin,  many  of  Voltaire's  former 
adorers  detached  themselves  more  than  half-way  from 
that  worship;  they  felt  the  value  of  the  institutions  he 
had  rashly  sapped;  they  told  themselves  that  he,  too, 
would  have  regretted  them  as  they  did;  they  took 
better  account  of  his  inconsistencies  and,  while  pre- 
serving their  admiration  for  an  inimitable  and  seduc- 
tive intellect,  they  came  at  last  to  judge  him  with  a 
moral  severity  justified  by  experience.  Marie-Joseph 
Chenier  continued  to  admire  everything  in  Voltaire, 
and  the  "  Epistle  "  which  he  addressed  to  him  might 
be  made  the  brilliant  programme  of  the  Voltaireans. 
But    men   of   taste,    whose    minds    had    opened   to 


19°  Doltaire, 

perceptions  of  a  higher  order,  men,  for  instance,  like  M. 
de  Fontanes,  knew  better  how  to  distinguish  what  Vol- 
taire merited  as  a  charming  author  from  what  was  due 
to  him  as  an  indecent  satirist,  an  imprudent  and  inex- 
cusable philosopher.  In  this  second  generation  Vol- 
taire found,  therefore,  enlightened  judges,  very  just  in 
their  estimates,  and  well  able  to  distinguish  between 
his  merits  and  demerits. 

As  for  those  I  call  the  third  generation,  in  which  I 
take  the  liberty  of  placing  the  men  of  my  own  age 
after  those  who  are  a  dozen  years  older,  it  is  less  an 
excessive  admiration  they  have  had  to  recover  from 
than  a  sentiment  more  or  less  the  reverse.  The  influ- 
ence of  M.  de  Chateaubriand  (in  some  respects  a  fairly 
impartial  judge  of  Voltaire),  that  of  Mme.  de  Stael,  in 
other  words,  Rousseau  still,  the  awakening  of  a  spirit- 
ual philosophy  respectful  to  human  nature,  the  action 
also  of  the  religious  Renascence  which  touched  im- 
aginations if  not  hearts,  the  literary  influence  that 
breathed  from  the  land  of  Schiller  and  Goethe,  and 
from  that  of  Shakespeare,  Byron,  and  Walter  Scott 
— all  these  diverse  general  causes  acted  strongly 
upon  many  among  us  at  our  first  reading  of  Voltaire. 
Some  were  inclined  to  deny  him  too  much.  But  in 
time,  and  by  losing  their  juvenile  haughtiness  and  ri- 
gidity, men  were  led  to  do  more  justice  to  this  natural 
human  being,  to  this  language  that  seeks  to  be  only 
the  swift  medium  of  agreeable  good  sense,  and  to 
which,  after  so  many  adventurous  flights  and  fatiguing 


Doltaire.  191 

varieties  of  style,  they  are  glad  to  return  to  refresh 
themselves  as  if  from  the  material  source.  They  have 
been  brought  to  recognise  those  many  qualities  of 
quick  precision,  of  sarcastic  reason,  and  grace.  I  say, 
therefore,  without  thinking  that  I  grant  to  ourselves 
too  much,  that  in  this  third  generation,  more  than  one 
mind  has,  without  wavering  on  essential  points,  come 
to  see  in  Voltaire  what  ought  to  be  seen  when  con- 
sidered for  himself,  and  for  the  immediate  conse- 
quences that  resulted  from  his  works. 

But  those  consequences  (and  here  is  the  misfortune) 
were  not  only  immediate  and  related  to  his  time  : 
they  will  still  flow  on  and  influence  for  generations; 
they  are  far  from  being  exhausted.  The  man  and  the 
writer  in  Voltaire  may  be  thoroughly  known  and  de- 
fined, at  any  rate  they  can  be;  but  the  combatant  and 
the  leader  of  a  Voltaire  party  will  still  continue.  Like 
a  dead  general,  whose  name  is  the  pledge  of  victory, 
his  followers  have  tied  him  on  his  horse,  and  the 
battle  rages  round  him  as  round  a  mighty  warrior. 
He  is  the  champion  of  immortal  quarrels.  In  vain 
may  we  look  for  impartiality  in  that  melee!  Sorry 
effort  of  a  posterity  that  continually  turns  tail  and 
retreats!  What  pains  it  takes  to  attain  to  righteous- 
ness, to  see  the  right,  and  when  it  has  all  but  reached 
that  point,  in  a  moment  here  are  new-comers,  who 
convulse  everything,  put  all  at  stake  once  more,  and 
in  the  name  of  their  passions  or  their  convictions 
choose  to  see   but   one   side,  are   excessive  in  their 


192  Doltaire. 

enthusiasms  as  they  are  in  their  invectives,  and  com- 
pel the  whole  work  to  be  done  over  again. 

The  various  volumes  of  Voltaire's  "  Letters  "  enable 
us  to  make  a  rapid  survey  of  his  life.  At  twenty-four 
years  of  age  we  find  him  in  Paris  spending  his  time 
among  the  Villars,  Sullys,  Richelieus,  etc. ;  he  floated 
on  the  top  wave  of  the  great  world,  at  his  ease  and 
as  if  he  belonged  there,  but  with  a  slight  touch  of  inso- 
lence that  denotes  conquest.  These  were  the  days 
of  the  Regency,  when  ranks  were  becoming  mixed. 
Voltaire,  conscious  of  intellect,  sees  no  limit  to  his 
upward  flight;  from  the  first,  he  makes  his  way  on  a 
footing  of  equality  with  great  people.  The  latter 
caress  and  spoil  him,  until  the  day  comes  when  one 
of  them  makes  him  feel  that  all  is  not  won,  that 
favour  is  not  claim,  and  that  tolerance  is  not  right. 
Meantime;  in  the  midst  of  his  social  successes,  and 
while  working  at  his  tragedies  and  his  epic  poem, 
Voltaire  bethinks  him  of  making  his  fortune.  By  a 
sure  channel  which  he  has  to  the  Regent  (he  was 
in  the  way  of  having  several  through  his  friends)  he 
obtains  the  promise  of  a  licence  for  the  formation  of 
a  company  of  some  sort,  for  which  he  finds  the 
capitalists. 

Admire  who  will  this  faculty  of  Voltaire  at  twenty- 
four  years  of  age  for  writing  tragedies,  epic  poems, 
and  attending  to  business/  He  foresaw,  he  said,  that 
he  must  be  rich  in  order  to  be  independent.  I  think 
his  foresight  was  less  than  his  obedience  to  a  natural 


Doltatre.  193 

inclination,  to  a  need  in  his  nature  very  strongly 
marked,  which  was  noted  by  all  who  knew  him;  but 
he  combined  it  well  with  an  air  of  fashion  and  of  the 
great  world.  That  great  world  and  its  salons  made 
him,  in  some  respects,  an  accomplished  man,  a  poet 
with  the  easiest  and  liveliest  turn  of  phrase,  a  man  of 
Letters  with  a  taste  that  was  naturally  elegant.  When 
we  think  only  of  the  ideal  of  pleasure,  of  the  charm 
of  delicate  raillery  and  urbanity,  we  like  to  picture  to 
ourselves  Voltaire  in  that  enjoyment  of  society  into 
which,  at  various  times  in  his  life,  he  entered,  but  from 
which  he  was  always  fleeing. 

"Mon  Dieu,  my  dear  Cideville,"  he  writes  to  a  friend  of  those 
days,  "what  a  delightful  life  it  would  be  to  lodge  with  three  or  four 
men  of  Letters  with  talents  and  no  jealousy,  to  love  one  another,  live 
quietly,  cultivate  one's  art,  talk  of  it,  enlighten  ourselves  mutually! 
\  picture  to  myself  that  I  shall  some  day  live  in  this  little  Paradise,  of 
which  I  desire  you  shall  be  the  god." 

This  letter  was  written  in  1752,  that  is  to  say,  after 
his  life  in  England.  The  personages  of  this  ideal  inti- 
macy, which  he  saw  from  afar,  were  to  be  such  as 
Formont,  Cideville,  Des  Alleurs,  Mme.  Du  Deffand, 
President  de  Maisons,  Genonville,  the  elite  of  the 
friends  of  his  first  or  his  second  youth  :  persons  of  in- 
telligence and  safe  intercourse,  judging  everything, 
laughing  at  all,  but  among  themselves,  not  letting  the 
public  share  their  laughter;  persons  who  knew  every- 
thing, or  thought  they  did,  taking  the  world  hand- 
somely and  ironically,  and  chiefly  concerned  in  making 

VOL.  I.— 13. 


194  Doltaire. 

themselves  happy  together  by  the  pleasures  of  conver- 
sation and  communicative  study  without  constraint. 

But  Voltaire,  in  being  the  divinity  of  such  a  society, 
in  moderating  himself  sufficiently  to  be  contented  in  it, 
and  in  condemning  himself  to  lead  the  life  of  a  per- 
fectly polished  man,  would  have  been  no  more  than  a 
very  accomplished  Voiture  and  a  superior  Hamilton: 
he  had  in  him  other  stuff,  other  faculties,  which  were 
at  once  an  honour  and  a  danger  to  him.  Often  in  life 
he  made  part  of  those  delightful  coteries  {suavissimam 
gentem,  he  said)  which  were  formed  for  a  moment 
around  him,  rallying  to  his  light,  coteries  of  which  he 
was  the  genius  and  the  soul,  and  from  which  he  soon 
departed  through  some  accident.  He  was  usually  the 
cause  of  that  accident;  and  this  resulted  from  a  defect 
and  from  a  good  quality.  The  defect  was  the  need 
of  action  at  any  cost,  the  need  of  fame  and  renown, 
which  did  not  deny  itself  intrigues  and  manoeuvres, 
and  worked  with  doubtful  tools;  hence  a  whole  se- 
ries of  indiscretions,  concealments,  retractations,  dis- 
avowals, falsehoods;  in  short,  an  infinity  of  miserable 
things.  The  good  quality  was  a  passion,  often  sin- 
cere, and  a  conviction  on  points  that  concerned  hu- 
manity. But  even  after  he  became  what,  in  any  case, 
he  could  not  have  hindered  himself  from  being, — the 
king  of  the  poets  of  his  day  and  the  leader  of  the 
philosophic  party, — even  then  Voltaire  had  regrets;  he 
had  the  habits  of  a  man  of  society,  of  the  author  of 
society,  and  he  would  fain  have  remained  such.     To 


Doltaire.  195 

hear  him,  the  man  of  incessant  publicity,  who  wearied 
fame,  one  would  think  he  never,  or  scarcely  ever, 
published  a  book  by  his  own  will  but  always  reluct- 
antly: he  had  a  secretary  who  stole  his  manuscripts; 
an  indiscreet  friend  who  hawked  his  writings  about; 
a  piratical  publisher  had  got  possession  of  his  pro- 
perty and  was  spoiling  it,  flilsifying  it,  and  thus  he  was 
forced  to  print  his  productions  himself  that  the  public 
might  have  them  in  their  integrity.  Such  were  his 
apologies.  "How  is  it  that  they  have  printed  my 
letter  to  the  Abbe  Dubois.?"  he  wrote  to  Thieriot  in 
1739;  "  1  am  much  mortified;  it  is  very  hard  to  be 
always  a  public  man."  All  his  life  it  was  his  preten- 
sion to  lead  the  existence  of  a  literary  nobleman,  who 
lives  on  his  own  fortune,  amuses  himself,  plays  tragedy 
in  society,  is  gay  with  his  friends,  and  laughs  at  all  the 
world.  "1  am  very  sorry,"  he  wrote  to  d'Argental 
from  Ferney  in  1764,  "that  they  have  printed  Ce  qui 
plait  aux  dames  and  l' Education  des  filles ;  this  is 
withering  little  flowers  that  are  charming  only  when 
they  are  not  sold  in  the  market."  It  is,  however, 
certain  that  Voltaire,  from  his  earliest  entrance  into 
society,  before  the  buffoon's  laugh  and  the  fleshless 
grin,  Voltaire,  in  the  bloom  of  his  gaiety  and  malice, 
was,  by  temperament  as  well  as  by  principle,  the  poet 
and  the  artist  of  an  epoch  whose  avowed  end  and 
inspiration  was  pleasure — pleasure  before  all  else. 

But  the  most  agreeable  circles  did  not  suffice  Vol- 
taire,  and  could  not   hold  him;   he  left  them,  at  all 


196  Doltaire. 

moments,  as  I  have  said,  partly  from  his  own  fault, 
and  partly  for  reasons  more  serious  and  laudable.  He 
left  them  because  he  had  le  diable  an  corps — the  devil 
was  in  him;  and  also  because  there  were  some  sparks 
of  a  god  there  too.  To  sccff  is  very  amusing;  but  it 
is  only  a  slight  pleasure  if  we  cannot  scoff  at  people  to 
their  faces;  if  the  "silly  foes  "  we  deride  are  not  in- 
formed of  our  derision;  hence  many  sallies  and  im- 
prudent skirmishes,  which  soon  became  war  to  the 
death  between  those  foes  and  himself 

The  stage,  the  drama,  which  Voltaire  adored  and  in 
which  he  excelled,  according  to  the  taste  of  his  day, 
presented  him  to  the  public  on  a  nobler  side.  His- 
tory, in  which  he  also  excelled, —  showing  himself 
especially  superior  when  it  was  contemporaneous,  or 
nearly  so, — invited  him  to  become  a  serious  author  in 
the  most  respectable  meaning  of  the  word,  the  painter 
of  his  own  and  of  the  preceding  century.  Voltaire 
was  interested  in  all  that  happened  in  the  world  near 
him,  or  distant  from  him;  he  took  part  in  it,  he  was 
fired  by  it;  he  busied  himself  about  the  affairs  of 
others,  and  if  they  stirred  his  affections,  he  made 
them  his  own.  He  carried  movement,  bustle,  and 
confusion  wherever  he  was,  becoming  either  a  charm 
or  a  torment.  That  devil  of  a  man  (it  is  the  name 
that  we  give  him  involuntarily)  could  not,  in  any 
case,  in  spite  of  his  visions  of  a  quiet  retreat  and  smil- 
ing wisdom,  confine  himself  to  the  gentle  and  brilliant 
existence  of  an  Atticus,  or  even  of  a  Horace,  or  con- 


IDoltaire.  197 

tent  himself  with  the  motto  of  his  life  which  he  politely 
wrote  to  Marechal  de  Richelieu:  "I  limit  myself  to 
amusing  you." 

His  Correspondance  gives  few  details  concerning 
his  departure  from  France  in  1726  [caused  by  his  quar- 
rel with  the  Chevalier  de  Rohan]  and  his  three  years' 
retirement  in  England,  which  was  so  decisive  for  his 
intellectual  education.  He  was  doubtless  prepared 
for  it  by  his  conversations  with  Bolingbroke,  of  whom 
he  had  seen  much  in  Paris  and  at  his  country-house 
of  La  Source,  near  Orleans;  but  the  impression  he  re- 
ceived of  that  new  spectacle,  less  perhaps  for  its  polit- 
ical side  and  for  the  working  of  the  Constitution  than 
for  the  philosophical  and  liberal-thinking  group  of  men 
whom  he  met  in  England  seems  to  have  surpassed 
his  expectations;  it  made  a  profound  and  indelible  im- 
pression on  him.  This  period  of  Voltaire's  life,  these 
three  years  of  study  and  of  silence,  which  he  began  as 
nothing  more  than  a  Sceptic  of  the  Temple  and  a 
charming  figure  in  society,  and  from  which  he  issued 
a  man  and  a  philosopher,  still  remain  obscure  and 
somewhat  mysterious,  precisely  because  he  passed 
them  in  silence.  We  see  by  his  letters  to  Sir  William 
Faulkner  what  strong  and  tenderly  serious  ties  he 
there  contracted,  and  how  closely  and  durably  he  kept 
their  memory.  This  period  seems  to  me  the  only  one 
in  Voltaire's  life  that  makes  us  desire  fuller  details. 
There  is  a  moment  and  an  environment  when  talents 
and  minds,  until  then  young  and  adolescent,  complete 


198  IDoltatre. 

that  first  condition  and  become  adult.  England  was 
the  place  of  that  change  in  Voltaire.  He  returned 
from  there  definitively  formed,  with  a  fund  of  ideas 
that  he  did  not  much  increase,  and  with  an  inward 
stamp  that  he  never  lost. 

On  his  return  from  England,  he  seems  to  have 
thought  of  realising  his  dream  of  a  quiet  retreat,  where 
he  could  shelter  his  life  and  embellish  it,  giving  to  the 
world  the  overflowings  only  of  his  mind.  It  was  then 
that  he  began  his  close  intimacy  with  the  Marquise 
du  Chatelet,  and  had  his  period  of  Cirey.  He  lived 
for  her,  and  through  her.  If  we  consider  his  temper 
and  petulance,  and  Mme.  du  Chatelet's  character,  we 
may  wonder  that  this  liaison  lasted  more  than  fifteen 
years  and  was  severed  only  by  death.  He  was  happy 
in  it,  save  for  a  few  brief  storms,  domestic  squabbles 
that  transpired,  the  particulars  of  which  were  collected 
by  malignant  curiosity.  He  was  truly  under  a  charm; 
he  admired  her,  he  proclaimed  her  sublime,  he  thought 
her  beautiful ;  he  took  pleasure,  when  writing  to  Faulk- 
ner, in  giving  his  address  at  her  house,  the  chateau  de 
Cirey:  "Here,"  he  says,  "lives  a  young  lady,  the 
Marquise  du  Chatelet,  to  whom  I  have  taught  Eng- 
lish."    A  shrewd  observer  said,  however: 

"  Three  things  spoil  Cirey  for  me — first,  this  mania  for  geometry  and 
physics,  which  sits  very  ill  on  Voltaire,  in  whom  it  is  only  an  imitation 
of  the  marquise  ;  it  turns  him  from  his  true  vocation  and  from  the 
happy  domains  of  which  he  is  master  ; — second,  these  stormy  scenes, 
these  sudden  household  quarrels,  brief  but  burlesque,  of  which  we  are, 
willingly  or  not,  informed  ;  making  a  critic  remark  that  he  had  never 


MADAME  DU  CHATELET. 

From  a  copper  engraving. 


Doltatre.  199 

before  supposed  that  the  expression  '  daggers  drawn  '  was  anything 
more  than  a  metaphor  ; — and  third,  the  impossibility  that  Voltaire, 
though  he  be  now  in  love,  master  of  the  establishment,  natural  philo- 
sopher and  geometrician  at  second  hand,  should  ever  really  be  any- 
thing but  a  man  of  Letters,  from  the  tips  of  his  fingers  to  the  marrow 
of  his  bones.  Hence  his  quarrels  with  publishers,  his  sleeplessness,  his 
extraordinary  agitation  about  the  copies  of  La  Pucelle,  his  fits  of  fury, 
his  cries,  as  of  one  possessed,  against  Desfontaines  and  the  Paris  pam- 
phlets.    It  is  enough  indeed  to  spoil  an  Eden." 

As  for  the  morality  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there 
has  been  many  a  case  which  I  have  reprobated;  but 
if  some  readers  (as  I  have  reason  to  know)  would  lil^e 
me  to  condemn  oftener  and  more  sternly,  I  beg  them 
to  remark  that  I  succeed  much  better  by  inciting  them 
to  give  the  condemnation  themselves  than  if  I  took 
the  initiative  and  seemed  to  impose  upon  them  my 
judgment  at  every  turn  ;  a  course  which,  in  the  long 
run,  is  sure  to  weary  and  disgust  a  reader  with  the 
critic.  The  reader,  moreover,  likes  to  think  himself 
more  severe  than  the  critic;  I  leave  him  that  pleasure. 
It  suffices  me  to  relate  and  expound  faithfully,  so  that 
every  one  may  profit  by  matters  pertaining  to  the  in- 
tellect and  to  good  language  and  be  in  a  position  to 
do  justice  upon  the  other  and  wholly  moral  sides, 
which  I  have  not  tried  to  conceal. 

I  continue  now  to  speak  of  Voltaire  and  Mme. 
du  Chatelet,  who,  for  fifteen  years,  were  inseparably 
united.  Mme.  du  Chatelet  was  not  an  ordinary  per- 
son; she  occupied  a  rank  in  higher  literature  and 
philosophy  which  it  was  easier  for  the  women  of  her 
time  to   laugh  at  than   to  emulate.     The   love,   the 


200  Doltatre* 

friendship  that  Voltaire  had  for  her  was  founded  on 
admiration,  an  admiration  that  never  failed  at  any 
period;  and  a  man  like  Voltaire  could  not  be  so  much 
in  love  that  intellect  in  him  u'ould  long  be  the  dupe 
of  his  heart.  Mme.  du  Chatelet  must,  therefore,  have 
had  real  claims  to  the  admiration  of  so  excellent  a 
judge,  and  the  first  of  them  is  that  she  knew  how  to 
retain  and  charm  him. 

Her  maiden  name  was  Mile,  de  Breteuil,  and  she 
was  born  in  1706,  twelve  years  later  than  Voltaire. 
She  had  a  fine  education,  and  learned  Latin  in  her 
childhood.  Married  to  the  Marquis  du  Chatelet,  she 
lived,  at  first,  the  life  of  her  period,  the  life  of  the 
Regency,  and  the  Due  de  Richelieu  was  inscribed  on 
the  list  of  her  brilliant  conquests.  Voltaire,  who  had 
always  known  her,  did  not  become  intimate  with  her 
until  after  his  return  from  England,  about  1733.  He 
was  then  thirty-nine  years  old,  and  Mme.  du  Chatelet 
twenty-seven.  The  mission  of  Voltaire,  at  that  time, 
was  to  naturalise  in  France  the  English  ideas,  the 
philosophical  principles  which  he  had  imbibed  in 
reading  Locke  and  in  the  society  of  Bolingbroke. 
But,  more  than  that,  having  appreciated  the  sound- 
ness and  the  immensity  of  Newton's  discovery,  he 
blushed  to  see  France  still  amused  by  worthless  sys- 
tems while  full  light  reigned  elsewhere,  and  he  deter- 
mined to  propagate  the  true  doctrine  of  knowledge 
of  the  universe,  with  which  he  mingled  his  ideas  of 
philosophic  deism.     Mme.  du  Chatelet  was  a  woman 


IDoltaire.  201 

to  second  him — what  am  I  saying  ? — to  precede  him 
in  that  path. 

She  loved  the  exact  sciences,  and  felt  herself  im- 
pelled to  them  by  a  true  vocation.  Beginning  to 
study  mathematics,  first  with  Maupertuis,  and  then 
fundamentally  with  Clairaut,  she  made  remarkable 
progress  and  soon  outstripped  Voltaire,  who  was 
content  to  admire  without  being  able  to  follow  her. 
Mme.  du  Chatelet  wrote  and  published  Les  Institutions 
de  Physique,  in  which  she  explained  the  particular 
ideas  of  Leibnitz;  but  her  great  title  to  distinction  is 
that  she  translated  into  French  Newton's  immortal 
"  Principia."  To  it  she  added  an  algebraic  comment- 
ary, in  which  she  was  assisted  by  Clairaut.  Thus, 
by  inscribing  her  name  below  that  of  Newton  she 
seemed  already  to  invoke  Laplace's  method  of  ex- 
position. What  an  honour  for  a  woman  to  have  been 
able  to  slip  her  name  between  two  such  names! 

That  honour  would  have  cost  Mme.  du  Chatelet 
dear,  during  her  lifetime,  had  she  been  sensitive  to 
ridicule  and  to  epigrams.  In  other  days,  the  beautiful 
Hypatia,  mathematician  and  astronomer,  was  stoned 
at  Alexandria  by  the  populace.  Mme.  du  Chatelet, 
less  beautiful,  it  appears,  and  without  all  the  virtues 
of  Hypatia,  was  not  stoned,  but  she  underwent  the 
sharp  mockery  of  the  society  in  which  she  lived;  the 
wittiest  of  all  societies  and  the  most  malicious.  I  do 
not  think  there  exists  in  the  French  language  a  more 
savage  page,  more  bitterly,  more  cruelly  satirical  than 


202  IDoltaffc. 

the  Portrait  of  the  "divine  Emilie,"  drawn  by  Mme. 
du  Deffand  (her  intimate  friend),  which  begins  with 
these  words:  "Picture  to  yourself  a  tall,  gaunt  wo- 
man, without,  etc.,  etc."  It  should  be  read  in  Grimm, 
having  been  mutilated  and  "softened"  elsewhere.  I 
dare  not  transcribe  it,  lest  it  burn  this  paper.  It 
seems  to  have  been  written  by  a  cold-blooded  Fury, 
who  knew  how  to  write,  and  who  steeped  her  pen 
in  gall  or  vitriol.  On  every  line  is  the  pitiless  word. 
The  poor  victim  is  denied,  not  only  the  natural  use 
of  her  good  qualities  but  even  that  of  her  defects. 
The  final  stroke  is  the  most  treacherous,  the  most 
humiliating  of  all;  the  writer  shows  her  fastening, 
at  any  cost,  on  the  celebrity  of  M.  de  Voltaire:  "  It  is 
he  who  renders  her  an  object  of  public  attention,  and 
the  subject  of  special  conversations;  she  will  owe  it 
to  him  in  time  to  come  that  she  lives;  meantime  she 
owes  him  that  which  enables  her  to  live  now." 

To  this  Portrait  should  be  added,  to  complete  the 
satire,  passages  from  Mme.  de  Staal-Delaunay's  letters 
to  Mme.  du  Deffand,  which  describe  graphically  but 
in  ugly  colours,  the  entrance  of  Voltaire  and  Mme. 
du  Chatelet  one  evening  into  the  salon  of  the  Du- 
chesse  du  Maine.  "They  appeared  at  the  stroke  of 
midnight  like  two  spectres,  with  an  odour  of  em- 
balmed corpses. "  They  diverted  society  with  their  airs 
and  their  absurdities,  they  irritated  it  with  their  singu- 
larities. Working  all  day,  he  at  history,  she  at  New- 
ton, they  would  neither  play  cards  nor  move  about: 


IDoltaire.  203 

*'  They  are  absolute  non-values  in  a  society  where 
their  learned  writings  are  of  no  account,"  Mme.  du 
Chatelet,  especially,  could  not  find  a  spot  sufficiently 
quiet,  a  room  silent  enough  for  her  meditations: 

"  Mme.  du  Chatelet  went  yesterday  to  her  third  lodging,"  writes 
Mme.  de  Staal;  "she  could  not  endure  the  one  she  had  last;  there 
was  noise,  and  smoke  without  fire  (which  seems  to  me  her  emblem). 
The  noise  does  not  trouble  her  at  night,  so  she  told  me,  but  in  the 
daytime,  at  her  work;  it  disarranges  her  ideas.  She  is  now  making  a 
revise  of  her  "  Principles  ";  this  is  an  exercise  she  goes  through  every 
year,  otherwise  they  might  escape  and  get  away  so  far  she  might  never 
recover  a  single  one  of  them.  1  think  her  head  is  a  house  of  detention 
for  them,  and  not  the  place  of  their  birth,  so  she  has  to  keep  them 
carefully  watched.  She  prefers  the  fine  air  of  this  occupation  to  all 
amusement,  and  persists  in  not  showing  herself  till  night-time.  Vol- 
taire makes  gallant  verses,  which  do  in  some  sort  repair  the  bad  effect 
of  their  singular  conduct." 

The  tone  of  this  satire  is  that  of  the  wittiest  and 
most  delicate  of  feminine  pens.  In  reading  the  letters 
of  Mme.  de  Staal  to  Mme.  du  Deffand,  we  cannot 
help  noticing,  in  the  midst  of  that  society,  apparently 
the  most  civilised  and  the  most  courteous,  the  melan- 
choly character  of  this  sneering  gaiety  in  two  women 
bored  by  their  lives.  What  a  moral  and  intellectual 
void  is  felt  in  such  backbiting,  more  idle,  perhaps, 
than  malicious!  what  bitter  and  sterile  hardness!  It 
was  time  that  the  fire  of  heaven  should  fall  and  burn 
away  those  dried  husks  to  renew  the  earth. 

Mme.  du  Chatelet  escaped,  at  any  rate,  from  such 
miseries  as  these;  her  noble  studies,  her  mental  occu- 
pations, guarded  her  from  the  paltry  topics  on  which  the 
distinguished  minds  around  her  consumed  themselves. 


2  04  IDoltaire. 

Voltaire  was  perhaps  mistaken,  and  had  a  bandage 
over  his  eyes  when  he  wrote:  "No  one  was  ever 
so  learned  as  she,  and  no  one  ever  deserved  so  little 
to  have  it  said  of  her:  'That  is  a  learned  woman.' 
.  .  .  The  ladies  who  played  cards  with  her  in  the 
queen's  salon  little  thought  they  were  seated  beside 
the  Commentator  on  Newton."  But  he  was  certainly 
right  when  he  added:  "All  that  occupied  society 
was  within  her  province,  except  its  slander.  No  one 
ever  heard  her  criticise  an  absurdity.  She  had  neither 
the  time  nor  the  will  to  perceive  such  things;  and 
when  she  was  told  that  certain  persons  did  not  do 
her  justice,  she  said  she  would  rather  not  know  it." 
If  the  mathematics  of  Mme.  du  Chatelet  served  only  to 
give  her  this  moral  superiority,  it  was  much. 

We  can  judge  her  directly  from  her  letters,  and  from 
certain  writings  in  which  she  painted  herself.  In  the 
early  days  of  her  liaison  with  Voltaire,  in  1734,  the 
latter,  having  taken  alarm  from  information  that  came 
to  him  relating  to  one  of  his  many  imprudences, 
thought  himself  obliged  to  leave  Cirey  in  the  depth  of 
winter,  and  go  for  safety  to  Holland.  Mme.  du 
Chatelet,  in  her  intense  anxiety,  writes  to  the  good 
friend  of  her  friend,  to  M.  d' Argental,  begging  him  to 
clear  up  the  affair,  and  bring  about  the  return  of  him 
without  whom  she  cannot  live: 

"  I  am,"  she  says,  "  one  hundred  and  fifty  leagues  from  your  friend; 
and  it  is  twelve  days  since  1  have  had  any  news  of  him.  Forgive  me, 
forgive  me,  but  my  state  is  dreadful.      .     .      ." 

"  For  fifteen  days  1  was  not  two  hours  away  from  him  ;  and  then 


IDoltaire.  205 

I  wrote  to  him  from  my  room  to  his  ;  and  now  it  is  fifteen  days  that  I 
know  not  where  he  is,  nor  what  he  does.  I  have  not  even  the  con- 
solation of  sharing  his  misfortune.  Forgive  me  for  deafening  you  with 
my  griefs — but  1  am  so  unhappy!  " 

They   fear  some   danger,   but  they  do  not   know 
what.      Mme.   du  Chatelet  suspects  that  the   threat 
may  have  been  a  trick  against  her,  to  frighten  Vol- 
taire, and  break  up  their  happiness.     In  all  her  letters 
we  see  how  she  distrusts  his  wisdom   when  he  is 
away  from  her,  abandoned  without  advice  to  his  ir- 
ritability,  to   his  hasty  emotions  and   his  petulance. 
"  Believe  me,"  she  writes  to  d'Argental,  "  do  not  leave 
him  long  in  Holland.     He  may  be  discreet  for  a  time, 
but  remember    'there   is  little  virtue  that  resists  for 
ever.'  "     She  is  constantly  sending  him  word  through 
d'Argental,  to  be  wise  and  keep  to  an  incognito — an 
incognito  for  Voltaire!    that  man,  that  child,  with  a 
passion  for  celebrity!     She  fears  that  he  may  accus- 
tom himself,  over  there,  to  do  without  her:  liberty 
has  great  charms  and  so  have  Dutch  publishers;  those 
publishers  who  tempt  you  to  print  all,  and  say  all. 
She  has  a  fixed  idea  that  he  must  be  made  to  behave 
wisely  "  over  there,"  and  not  put  too  much  into  those 
Dutch  editions.     "  Above  all,  he  must  not  put  in  Le 
Mondain  "  (this   refers  to  an  affair  of  State  at  that 
time,  on  which  the  life  of  a  man  depended).     "It  is 
necessary  at  every  moment,"  she  cries,  "to  save  him 
from  himself;  and  I  use  more  policy  to  guide  him  than 
the  Vatican  employs  to  keep  Christianity  in  its  fetters." 
This  last  remark  is  at  least  solemn    and  may  seem 


2o6  IDoltaire. 

disproportionate;  but  thus  it  is  that  passion  reasons. 
On  the  next  page  she  will  speal<  of  him  with  tender 
solicitude  as  a  child:  "We  are  sometimes  very  obstin- 
ate," she  says;  "this  demon  of  reputation,  which  I 
think  very  ill-understood,  never  quits  us." 

Voltaire  remained  in  Holland  to  obey  his  nature  and 
commit  imprudences.  He  sent  to  the  Prince  Royal  of 
Prussia  (afterwards  Frederick  the  Great)  a  manuscript 
on  La  Metaphysique  ;  and  that  Metaphysique,  if  printed, 
is  of  such  a  nature  that  it  would  ruin  its  author  for 
ever.  Mme.  du  Chatelet  perceives  the  folly;  she 
complains  to  d'Argental  sadly  and  eloquently: 

"  If  any  friend  twenty  years  old  asked  him  for  a  manuscript,  he 
ought  to  refuse  it  ;  but  to  send  it  to  an  unknown  youth,  and  a  prince  ! 
Why  should  he  let  his  future  tranquillity  depend  on  another  man? 
and  that  from  no  necessity,  solely  out  of  silly  vanity  (for  I  cannot  falsify 
the  proper  word)  to  show  to  a  person,  who  is  not  a  judge,  a  work  in 
which  he  will  see  nothing  but  the  imprudence  of  it.  He  who  confided 
his  secrets  with  such  levity  deserves  to  be  betrayed.  And  I,  what 
have  1  done  that  he  should  make  the  happiness  of  my  life  hang  upon 
the  prince-royal  ?     I  own  to  you  I  feel  outraged.     .     .     ." 

That  is  the  complaint  of  a  woman  who  feels  her 
rights;  yet,  at  the  same  moment,  she  loves  him;  she 
calls  him  "a  creature  so  lovable  at  all  points";  she 
sees  none  but  him  in  the  universe,  and  proclaims  him 
"the  finest  ornament  of  France."  Elsewhere,  the 
happy  expression  escapes  her:  "It  is  my  belief  that 
the  persons  who  persecute  him  have  never  read  him." 
She  is  evidently  under  the  charm:  love,  for  her,  has 
taken  the  path  of  intellect. 

A  reflection,  however,  presents  itself,  and  she  her- 


Doltaire.  207 

self  could  not  help  making  it:  what  temerity  to  go 
and  confide  her  happiness,  her  fate,  all  her  future  as  a 
woman,  to  a  man  of  Letters  such  as  Voltaire,  to  a 
poet  so  much  of  a  poet,  and  to  be  at  the  mercy, 
every  day,  of  his  irritable  temperament!  The  fate  of 
these  two  united  beings  was  always  hanging  on  the 
chances  of  vanity  or  of  petulance.  Apropos  of  the 
perpetual  disturbances  that  Voltaire's  thoughtless  ca- 
pers brought  into  the  daily  life  of  Mme.  du  Chatelet, 
the  good  souls  of  those  days  were  never  weary  of 
talking;  they  pitied  her  openly;  President  Henault, 
one  of  her  best  friends,  wrote  to  Mme.  du  Deffand: 
"That  poor  du  Chatelet  ought  to  have  put  into  the 
lease  of  every  house  she  hires  a  clause  about  Voltaire's 
follies.  Truly,  it  is  incredible  that  a  man  should  be  so 
inconsiderate." 

If  you  are  a  woman,  if  you  are  wise,  and  if  your 
heart,  though  taking  fire,  will  give  itself  time  to 
choose,  listen  to  a  piece  of  advice:  love  neither  a 
Voltaire,  nor  a  Jean-Jacques,  nor  a  Goethe,  nor  a 
Chateaubriand,  if  such  great  men  should  cross  your 
path.  Love — whom  then  ?  Love  whoso  fully  and 
honestly  returns  you  the  same;  love  whoso  has  a 
whole  heart  to  give  you,  though  he  bear  no  cele- 
brated name  and  may  even  call  himself  the  Chevalier 
Des  Grieux.  An  honourable  Des  Grieux  and  a  virtu- 
ous Manon — that  is  the  ideal  of  those  who  know  how 
to  be  happy  in  silence;  fame  as  the  third  in  a  tete-d- 
tete  spoils  all. 


2o8  IDoltaire. 

But  we  moralists  may  talk  as  we  please,  the  reali- 
ties of  life  are  not  perfectly  regulated  by  rule.  Mme. 
du  Chatelet  loved  Voltaire,  and  in  rendering  account 
of  it  to  herself  she  passes  over  this  point.  At  heart, 
he  loves  better  (and  she  knows  it)  to  publish  his  Meta- 
physique  and  to  set  it  in  the  broadest  light,  than  to 
sacrifice  it  without  a  word  to  love  and  good  sense. 
There  is  the  man  of  Letters,  in  the  plain  truth  of  his 
nature. 

This  was,  nevertheless,  the  point  at  which  the 
liaison  between  Mme.  du  Chatelet  and  Voltaire  began 
to  weaken.  Three  years  later,  in  1738,  Voltaire  was 
seized  with  one  of  his  literary  freaks  which  "  entirely 
altered  the  charming  sweetness  of  his  manners."  A 
libel  of  the  Abbe  Des  Fontaines  had  so  put  him  beside 
himself  that  he  wanted,  every  time  that  the  post 
brought  him  letters,  to  start  for  Paris  to  see  the  minis- 
ters, the  lieutenant  of  police,  to  present  a  petition,  to 
lay  a  complaint,  and  pursue  his  vengeance  to  extinc- 
tion. Mme.  du  Chatelet  could  not  succeed  in  calming 
him,  nor  in  convincing  him  that  the  happiness  of  two 
choice  beings  cultivating  together  philosophy  and  Let- 
ters, ought  not  to  depend  on  miserable  insults  com- 
ing from  low  sources.  The  terrestrial  paradise  of 
Cirey  was  now  a  hell  of  wrath  and  disquietude. 
"Truly,  it  is  very  hard,"  she  writes,  "to  pass  one's 
life  battling  in  the  bosom  of  retirement  and  happiness. 
Good  God!  if  he  would  only  believe  us  "  (d'Argental 
and  herself)  "  he  would  be  happy  ! " 


IDoltafre,  209 

But  things  were  much  worse  three  or  four  years 
later,  during  a  stay  they  made  at  Brussels,  when 
Voltaire  escaped  her  altogether  for  politics.  He  had 
taken  it  into  his  head  to  obtain  a  secret  mission  from 
the  ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs  to  the  King  of  Prussia. 
1  do  not  know  whether  it  was  diplomatic  ambition, 
the  temptation  of  another  career,  or  merely  the  simple 
attraction  of  novelty,  that  seized  him  at  this  moment. 
He  departed,  rushed  through  the  lesser  principalities, 
and  went  from  Berlin  to  Baireuth  (October,  1743). 
"He  is  drunk,  absolutely,  he  is  mad  about  Courts  and 
Germany."  The  King  of  Prussia  is  evidently  Mme. 
du  Chatelet's  great  rival  at  this  time — "  singular  rival " 
she  adds,  bitterly.  She  remains  whole  weeks  with- 
out hearing  from  him,  and  learns  of  his  journeyings 
hither  and  thither  from  the  newspapers;  her  heart  is 
wounded: 

"  How  many  things  to  reproach  him  with!  how  far  his  heart  is 
from  mine!  .  .  .  To  be  forced  to  complain  of  him  is  a  sort  of 
torture  that  I  never  knew  before.  .  .  .  All  I  have  endured  for  a 
month  past  would,  perhaps,  alienate  any  woman  but  me;  but,  though 
he  may  make  me  unhappy,  he  cannot  diminish  my  feelings.  .  .  . 
His  heart  has  much  to  make  amends  for  if  it  is  still  to  be  worthy  of 
mine." 

Evidently,  no  matter  what  she  says,  she  is  becom- 
ing weaned  from  him.  These  painful  impressions 
may  have  softened  and  concealed  themselves  when 
Voltaire,  his  caprice  exhausted,  returned  to  the  magic 
circle  of  Cirey;  but  a  sad  conviction  remained  in  the 
depths  of  Mme.  du  Chatelet's  heart;  we  find  traces  of 

VOL.    I. — 14. 


2IO  IDoltaire. 

it  in  a  little  treatise  she  wrote  about  this  time  on 
"  Happiness";  towards  the  close  of  which  she  says: 

"  I  was  happy  for  ten  years  through  the  love  of  him  who  had  sub- 
jugated my  soul;  and  those  ten  years  I  spent  alone  with  him,  without 
one  moment  of  distaste  or  of  languour.  When  age  and  illness  diminished 
his  liking,  I  was  long  in  perceiving  it:  I  loved  for  the  two;  I  spent 
my  whole  life  with  him,  and  my  heart,  exempt  from  suspicions,  enjoyed 
the  pleasure  of  loving  and  the  illusion  of  believing  myself  beloved.  It 
is  true  that  I  have  lost  that  happy  condition,  and  not  without  its  cost- 
ing me  many  tears. 

In  writing  these  pages,  she  still  fancied  she  could 
hold  fast  to  what  she  called  the  "  immutability  "  of  her 
heart,  and  that  the  peaceful  sentiment  of  friendship, 
joined  to  the  passion  for  study,  would  suffice  to  keep 
her  happy.  She  was  then  forty  years  old  and,  stoic 
and  geometrician  that  she  was,  she  might  well  think 
herself  in  port,  when,  having  gone  with  Voltaire  to 
pass  part  of  the  years  1747  and  1748  at  the  little  Court 
of  Lorraine,  this,  in  two  words,  is  what  happened. 

She  there  met,  in  the  society  of  the  Marquis  de 
Bouflers,  a  man  thirty  years  of  age;  elegant,  agreeable, 
witty,  although  of  a  somewhat  dry  and  barren  mind; 
known  at  that  time  by  an  "  Epistle  toChloe,"  a  rather 
pretty  piece  in  the  sensuous  style.  This  was  M.  de 
Saint-Lambert.  He  played  the  gallant  to  her;  and  she 
forgot  for  him  her  philosophic  reflections,  or,  rather, 
she  remembered  them.  Feeling  that  passion  revived 
in  her,  she  took  it  at  its  word,  and,  putting  her  prin- 
ciples into  action,  she  gave  herself  up  to  it.  The 
results  are  well  known;  an  incident,  half-grotesque, 


IPoItaire.  211 

indecent,  and  fatal  followed,  which  occupied  the  minds 
and  tongues  of  society,  and  led  to  the  death  of  Mme. 
du  Chatelet  six  days  after  the  birth  of  her  child,  Sep- 
tember 10,  1749. 

The  impression  that  this  death  made  on  Voltaire 
was  keen,  and  did  honour  to  his  sensibility.  His 
secretary,  Longchamps,  relates,  in  great  detail,  the 
manner  in  which  he  took  the  whole  affair;  his  first 
anger  and  fury  at  finding  himself  deceived,  then  his 
half-laughable,  yet  touching  resignation.  The  loss  of 
Mme.  du  Chatelet  drew  real  tears  from  his  eyes,  inter- 
rupted now  and  then  by  some  of  those  sharp,  petulant, 
sensible  words  he  never  could  refrain  from  saying, 
and  which  incline  us  to  apply  to  him,  in  parody. 
Homer's  saying:  "He  wept  with  an  outburst  of 
laughter."  Three  or  four  days  after  this  death,  as  he 
fretted  much  about  a  ring  Mme.  du  Chatelet  wore, 
which  had  his  portrait  under  the  setting,  Longchamps 
told  him  that  he  had  taken  the  precaution  to  remove 
the  ring,  but  the  portrait  within  it  was  that  of  M.  de 
Saint-Lambert.  "O  Heaven  !"  cried  Voltaire,  rais- 
ing and  clasping  his  hands:  "such  are  women!  I 
displaced  Richelieu,  Saint  -  Lambert  turns  me  out! 
that 's  in  the  order  of  things;  one  nail  drives  out  an- 
other: so  goes  the  world!  " 

Mme.  du  Chatelet's  eyes  were  scarcely  closed,  be- 
fore Voltaire  wrote  to  Mme.  du  Deffand  to  announce 
the  death:  "  It  is  to  the  sensibility  of  your  heart  that 
1  have  recourse  in  my  despair."    We  remember  the 


212 


Doltaire. 


satirical  portrait;  verily,  tiie  friend  in  despair  chose  a 
good  confidant! 

Voltaire's  existence  was  stranded  and  everything 
thrown  again  into  doubt  and  confusion  by  the  death 
of  Mme.  du  Chatelet.  Deprived  of  the  friend  who  had 
steadied  him,  who  had  held  the  tiller  for  him,  he  nei- 
ther knew  what  to  do  nor  where  to  turn.  He  was 
very  near  doing  something  desperate.  His  first  idea 
was  to  retire  to  the  abbey  of  Senones,  near  Father 
Calmet,  and  to  plunge  into  study;  his  second  was  to 
go  to  England,  near  to  Lord  Bolingbroke,  and  give 
himself  up  to  philosophy.  He  took,  at  first,  a  wiser 
course,  which  was  to  go  to  Paris  and  talk  of  Mme.  du 
Chatelet  with  d'Argental  and  the  Due  de  Richelieu, 
and  to  distract  his  mind  by  having  his  tragedies  acted 
before  him  in  his  own  house.  But  the  cajoleries  of 
the  King  of  Prussia,  which  Mme.  du  Chatelet  had 
counteracted  as  best  she  could  and  as  long  as  she 
lived,  returned  to  tempt  him.  He  resisted  no  longer, 
and  he  went,  at  fifty-six  years  of  age,  to  that  last  and 
sad  schooling  of  Prussia,  whence  he  returned  less  agi- 
tated, and,  apparently,  a  little  wiser. 

Frederick  the  Great  was  Prince  Royal  of  Prussia, 
and  twenty-four  years  of  age,  when  he  began  his 
correspondence  with  Voltaire  in  1736,  four  years  be- 
fore he  ascended  the  throne.  Voltaire  was  then  living 
at  Cirey,  where  he  received  from  the  young  prince, 
not  a  letter  of  compliment  but  a  truly  passionate  de- 
claration.    We  may  smile  to-day  at  that  first  letter, 


Doltaire.  213 

awkward  as  it  was,  in   which  Frederick  mixes   his 
admiration  for  Wolfe  with  that  he  feels  for  Voltaire, 
and  speaks  to  the  latter  in  the  nam.e  of  "  sweetness," 
and   "the   support   that   you   give  to  all  those  who 
are  vowed  to  art  and  the  sciences."     But  all  through 
the  singular  style  of  Frederick's  first  letters  a  noble 
thought  makes  itself  felt.     Considering  Voltaire  from 
a  distance  and  by  his  works  only,  embracing  him  with 
that  enthusiasm  of  youth  which  it  is  honourable  to 
have  felt  once  in  our  lives,  Frederick  proclaims  him 
the  sole  heir  of  the  great  century  that  has  lately  ended, 
"the  greatest  man  of  France  and  a  mortal  who  does 
honour  to  language."     He  admires  and  salutes  him, 
without  as  yet  perceiving  the  faults  of  the  man,  and 
solely  for  the  beauties  of  his  mind  and  the  graces  of 
his  style.     He  declares  himself  his  disciple — his  dis- 
ciple not  only  in  his  writings  but  in  his  actions;   for, 
deceived  by  distance  and  the  golden  mists  of  youth, 
he  sees  in  him  almost  a  Lycurgus  and  a  Solon,  a  legis- 
lator and  a  sage.     Let  us  not  smile  too  broadly.     No 
one  ever  felt  more  truly  than  this  young  prince  what 
Letters  might  be  in  their  highest  inspiration,   what 
they  have  in  them  that  is  lofty  and  useful,  what  their 
glory  possesses   that   is   durable  and  immortal.     "1 
count  it  one  of  the  greatest  honours  of  my  life  to 
be  born  the  contemporary  of  a  man  of  such  distin- 
guished attainments  as  yours."    This  sentiment  shines 
through   the   whole    of  this    phase    of   their   corre- 
spondence.    Voltaire  is  charmed;  he  flatters  also;  he 


214  IDoltaire. 

thanks,  he  lauds,  he  enchants;  one  cannot  truly  say 
that  he  is  scoffing  under  his  breath;  and  no  doubt  he 
did  not  then  laugh  too  much  at  certain  solecisms  and 
vulgarities  of  tone  that  often  accompanied  this  North- 
ern homage.  In  return,  he  thinks  the  young  prince 
"writes  verses  like  Catullus  in  Caesar's  time";  he 
plays  the  flute  "like  Telemaque  —  he  is  Augustus- 
Frederick- Virgil."  "Enough!"  says  Frederick,  who 
here  has  the  advantage  in  good  sense  and  good  taste: 
"  I  am  not,  I  assure  you,  a  candidate  for  a  great  man; 
I  am  merely  a  simple  individual  who  is  known  only 
to  a  small  part  of  this  continent,  and  whose  name, 
according  to  all  appearance,  will  not  do  more  than 
decorate  a  genealogical  tree  and  then  drop  into  ob- 
scurity and  oblivion."  Voltaire  had  the  face  to  tell 
him,  on  one  occasion,  that  he  wrote  better  French 
than  Louis  XIV;  that  Louis  the  XIV  did  not  know 
how  to  spell,  and  other  puerile  things  of  that  sort ;  as 
if  Louis  XIV  had  not  been  one  of  the  men  in  his 
kingdom  whose  speech  was  of  the  best!  Here,  again, 
Frederick  stops  Voltaire,  and  teaches  him  a  lesson  in 
tact  : 

"  Louis  XIV,"  he  said,  "  was  a  great  prince  in  a  vast  number  of 
ways;  a  solecism,  a  mistake  in  spelling  could  not  tarnish  in  the  least 
the  glory  of  his  reputation,  established  by  so  many  actions  that  have 
immortalised  him.  He  could  say  in  every  sense  :  Ccesar  est  supra 
grammaticans  .  .  .  1  am  great  in  nothing;  nothing  but  my  dili- 
gence will  ever  make  me  of  use  to  my  country;  and  that  is  all  the 
glory  to  which  I  aspire." 

The  first  meeting  of  the  two  men  took  place  in 


IDoltaire,  215 

1740,  at  the  chateau  de  Meurs  on  the  Meuse,  where 
Voltaire  went  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  new  king  in 
the  first  months  of  his  reign.  It  was  ten  years  later 
(1750)  that  he  made  his  visit  to  Berlin,  after  the  death 
of  Mme.  du  Chatelet. 

In  Frederick's  admiration  for  Voltaire,  there  was  a 
mixture  of  truth  and  justice  and  of  error  and  illusion. 
He  felt  with  delight  "the  gaiety  of  that  brilliant  im- 
agination." He  enjoyed  that  lively,  familiar,  joyous 
genius:  "It  is  not  given  to  every  one,"  he  told  him, 
"to  make  the  mind  laugh."  No  words  could  better 
render  the  species  of  attraction,  the  sparkling,  gushing 
gift  so  peculiar  to  Voltaire.  Even  towards  the  end, 
and  while  wishing  him  "kinder  feelings,"  he  still  salutes 
him  as  "the  finest  organ  of  reason  and  truth."  All 
that  is  truly  felt  and  accurately  expressed.  But  when 
Frederick  admired  in  Voltaire  a  great  poet  above  all 
others,  when  he  saw  in  the  Henriade  the  ne  plus  ultra 
of  epics,  and  puts  it  above  the  "Iliad"  and  the  "i^neid," 
he  proves  his  want  of  ideality,  and  shows  to  what  a 
point  he  limited  his  horizons  in  this  direction. 

"What  pleasures  can  surpass  those  of  the  mind.?" 
he  cries — the  mind, — that  is  to  say,  brilliant  reasoning, 
gay  and  lively  reasoning;  that  is  the  whole  secret  of 
his  passion  for  Voltaire.  This  passion  (for  that  is  the 
right  word)  was  reciprocated.  Voltaire  cannot  conceal 
that  he,  the  great  coquette,  was  captivated  by  Frederick, 
and  in  the  witty  but  contemptible  libel,  so  untrust- 
worthy, which  he  wrote  after  his  flight  from  Berlin  to 


2i6  IDoltaire. 

avenge  himself  on  the  king,  he  could  not  refrain  from 
saying,  in  speaking  of  Potsdam:  "  The  suppers  were 
very  agreeable.  I  do  not  know  if  I  am  mistaken,  but 
it  seems  to  me  there  was  much  wit;  the  king  had  it, 
and  brought  it  out  in  others."  Observe  the  charm 
even  in  the  anger.  Such  was  the  irresistible  seduction 
they  exercised  on  each  other,  and  which  survived  even 
friendship. 

It  was  Frederick's  desire  to  assemble  around  him 
the  elite  of  the  distinguished  men  of  his  time,  and  he 
seemed  for  a  while  to  be  succeeding.  He  expected  to 
lead  abreast  matters  of  science  and  the  personnel  of  all 
the  great  minds  with  a  precision  that  was  almost  ad- 
ministrative: "  My  savants  arrive  in  the  autumn,"  he 
writes,  "and  I  hope  to  collect  in  Berlin  all  that  this 
age  has  produced  that  is  most  famous."  These  hopes 
were  crowned  when,  in  1750,  he  obtained  VoUaire. 
But  he  paid  dear,  as  we  know,  for  that  brief  satisfac- 
tion, and  Voltaire  also.  The  manner  in  which  Fred- 
erick writes  of  him  to  his  sister,  the  Margravine  of 
Baireuth,  and  of  his  other  beaux  esprits  is  piquant. 

Voltaire,  in  this  famous  sojourn,  quarrelled  finally 
with  Frederick  because  he  had  begun  suit  after  suit, 
wrangling  first  with  his  confreres,  the  other  men  of 
Letters,  and  introducing  civil  war  into  the  Academy. 

"Voltaire's  affair"  (a  suit  against  Hirschel)  "is  not 
yet  finished,"  writes  Frederick  to  his  sister,  February 
2,  1751.  "I  think  he  will  shuffle  out  of  it;  he  will 
not  be  less  clever,  but  his  character  will  be  more  de- 


Doltaire.  217 

spised  than  ever.  I  shall  see  him  when  it  is  all  over. 
But,  in  the  long  run,  I  would  rather  live  with  Mauper- 
tuis  than  with  him.  Maupertuis's  character  is  sure, 
and  he  has  more  of  the  art  of  conversation  than  the 
poet,  who,  if  you  do  not  take  good  care,  will 
dogmatise." 

This  is  the  first  time  that  I  find  Voltaire  accused  of 
dogmatising;  and  I  am  not  surprised  that  so  few  peo- 
ple have  made  that  accusation — very  few  were  in  a 
position  to  do  so.  Voltaire  on  becoming  celebrated 
had  no  equals;  every  one  in  his  presence  lowered  his 
flag,  and  listened  willingly.  Provided  he  came  for- 
ward and  was  himself,  no  one  thought  that  he  talked 
too  much.  Frederick,  who  liked  to  contradict  in  his 
turn,  and  to  cross  swords  without  yielding  ground, 
encountered  in  Voltaire  an  interlocutor,  both  peremp- 
tory and  intolerant:  they  were,  after  all,  two  king 
minds;  they  could  have  fine  interviews,  rather  than 
habitual  and  equal  conversations. 

Under  the  seduction  of  Voltaire's  mind,  Frederick 
held  out  as  long  as  he  could  against  the  squabbles  and 
dissensions  to  which  the  great  man's  sojourn  in  Ber- 
lin gave  rise.  He  expresses,  however,  more  than  one 
thought  of  sound  good  sense  and  practical  morals, 
which  might  serve  as  a  lesson  to  literary  men  of  all 
time: 

"Here,"  he  writes  to  his  sister,  March  13,  1752,  "the  Devil  is 
incarnate  in  my  men  of  Letters;  there  is  no  doing  anything  with 
them.     These  fellows  have  no  intelligence  except  for  society;  they 


2i8  Doltaire. 

are  severe  on  their  own  works  for  fear  of  being  criticised  by  others, 
and  indulgent  to  their  conduct — which  is  usually  ridiculous,  for  they 
believe  it  will  never  reach  posterity." 

"  You  behold  me  still  terrified  (June,  1752),  by  my  adventures  with 
these  gentlemen  my  beaux  esprits;  I  have  been  a  good  deal  splashed, 
as  always  happens  where  you  try  to  separate  folks  who  are  fighting." 

"  It  must  be  a  consolation  to  animals  to  see  that  people  with  minds 
are  often  no  better  than  they." 

I  give  only  the  moralising  of  Frederick  upon  his 
strife  with  Voltaire.  As  for  his  judgments  on  the 
man,  they  are  too  severe,  too  harsh  for  any  French 
pen  to  copy  them  willingly.  The  Margravine  of 
Baireuth,  who  had  seen  things  from  some  distance, 
continued,  even  at  the  moment  of  the  great  outburst, 
to  be  indulgent  to  the  poet.  He  continued  to  write  to 
her,  and  in  the  height  of  the  storm  he  took  pains  to 
conciliate  her.  She  was  won  by  the  charm,  the  witty, 
amusing,  charming  gift  that  won  back  Frederick  him- 
self later;  she  did  as  posterity  has  done;  she  laughed, 
and  was  disarmed.     In  that  she  was  very  French. 

In  after  years,  at  a  critical  and  decisive  moment  after 
the  battle  of  Kolin,  in  1757,  she  bethought  herself  of 
using  Voltaire's  devotion  to  her  and  his  desire  to  re- 
pair the  wrongs  he  had  done  to  Frederick.  She  wrote 
to  him  in  the  month  of  August  of  that  year.  The  ob- 
ject was  to  save  Frederick,  detach  him  from  the  Coali- 
tion, or  at  least  to  check  France  by  convincing  her,  in 
one  way  or  another,  that  it  was  not  to  her  interest 
that  the  King  of  Prussia  should  be  destroyed;  and  that 
if  evil  happened  to  him,  she  would  later  repent  of  it. 
Voltaire,  then  living  in  Switzerland,  set  to  work  with 


IDoltaire.  219 

great  activity  (the  details  of  this  belong  elsewhere). 
Frederick,  informed  by  his  sister,  sent  Voltaire  the  fol- 
lowing lines: 

"  For  me,  threatened  by  shipwreck, 
I  ought,  facing  the  storm, 
To  think,  live,  die,  as  a  king." 

In  Voltaire's  reply  he  redeemed  his  past  ill-con- 
duct by  the  good  sense  and  the  frankness  of  his 
remonstrances: 

"  The  Catos  and  Othos,  whose  death  Your  Majesty  thinks  noble, 
had  nothing  else  they  could  do  but  fight  or  die;  Otho,  in  fact,  was  not 
sure  whether  he  would  be  allowed  to  live;  he  prevented,  by  a  volun- 
tary death,  a  death  he  might  have  been  made  to  suffer.  Our  mor- 
ality and  your  situation  are  far  from  requiring  such  an  act.  In  a  word, 
your  life  is  needed;  you  know  how  dear  it  is  to  a  numerous  family, 
and  to  all  those  who  have  the  honour  to  approach  you;  you  know  that 
the  affairs  of  Europe  are  never  long  on  the  same  basis,  and  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  a  man  like  you  to  hold  himself  in  readiness  for  events.  1 
dare  to  say  more :  believe  me,  if  your  courage  led  you  to  that  heroic  ex- 
tremity, it  would  not  be  approved;  your  partisans  would  condemn  it, 
and  your  enemies  would  triumph." 

In  the  second  part  of  Voltaire's  Correspondence  with 
the  King  of  Prussia,  when  they  were  reconciled  after 
their  quarrel,  we  find  a  totally  different  tone  from  that 
in  the  first  part.  All  illusion  is  over;  nothing  is  left 
but  that  keen  delight  in  intellect  which  still  manifests 
itself.  The  primitive  Frederick,  the  juvenile  enthusiast 
has  disappeared;  he  has  given  place  to  the  philoso- 
pher, to  the  experienced,  superior  man,  who  is  no 
longer  tentative  in   anything.     Also  the  king  is  felt 


2  20  ItJoltaire, 

oftener.  Each  tells  the  other  truths,  and,  what  is  rare, 
endures  them.  Voltaire  utters  them  to  the  king,  and 
Frederick  returns  them:  "You  have  done  me  great 
wrongs,"  he  writes  to  Voltaire.  "I  have  forgiven 
them  all,  and  I  even  wish  to  forget  them.  But  if  you 
had  not  had  to  do  with  a  madman  in  love  with  your 
noble  genius,  you  would  not  have  got  off  so  well." 
Yet,  after  these  severe  words,  too  strong  not  to  be 
just,  after  these  words  of  the  king,  the  madman  iyi 
love  with  the  brilliant  mind  still  lets  himself  be  seen 
when  he  adds: 

"Do  you  want  sweet  things?  Very  good;  I  will  tell  you  some 
truths.  1  esteem  in  you  the  finest  genius  that  the  ages  have  borne;  I 
admire  your  poesy,  I  love  your  prose;  above  all,  those  little  pieces  in 
your  literary  Melanges.  Never  has  any  author  before  you  had  a  tact 
so  keen,  a  taste  so  sure  and  delicate  as  you  have.  You  are  charming 
in  conversation;  you  know  how  to  amuse  and  instruct  at  the  same 
time.  You  are  the  most  seductive  being  that  I  know,  capable  of 
making  yourself  loved  by  all  the  world  when  you  choose.  You  have 
such  graces  of  mind,  that  you  can  offend  and  yet  at  the  same  time  de- 
serve the  indulgence  of  those  who  know  you.  In  short,  you  would 
be  perfect  if  you  were  not  a  man." 

Who  will  say  now  that  he  who  appreciated  Voltaire 
to  this  degree,  and  could  practise  these  French  ways 
of  insinuating  sweetness  after  bitterness,  was  not  the 
man  of  his  time  who  ranked  close  to  Voltaire  in  wit  ? 

I  think  I  am  well  within  the  truth  when  I  say  that 
the  attraction  of  mind  between  these  two  men  sur- 
vived even  friendship;  though  it  is  evident,  when  we 
read  the  last  half  of  Voltaire's  Correspondence  with 
Frederick,  that  friendship  itself  was  not  dead  within 


Doltaire. 


221 


them;  that  it  had  revived  with  a  lingering  of  charm 
combined  with  reason,  and  that  it  was  founded  no 
longer  on  the  extravagant,  but  on  the  serious  and 
elevated  sides  of  their  nature.  Frederick,  while  he 
combats  the  always  irascible  and  choleric  instincts  of 
Voltaire,  now  growing  old,  supports  and  favours, 
as  much  as  he  can,  his  beneficent  and  humane  tend- 
encies. He  takes  pleasure  in  praising,  in  encour- 
aging the  defender  of  humanity,  of  tolerance,  the  man 
who  reclaimed  and  repeopled  the  waste  lands  of 
Ferney,  as  he  himself  had  peopled  the  sands  of  the 
Brandebourg;  in  a  word,  he  recognised  and  embraced 
in  the  great  practical  poet  his  collaborator  in  a  social 
work  and  in  civilisation.  With  a  remnant  of  the  old 
worship,  or,  if  you  like,  with  an  idolatry  still  touch- 
ing, in  all  the  comparisons  he  establishes  between 
them  he  gives  the  advantage  to  Voltaire,  and  this  in 
a  tone  of  feeling  that  cannot  be  doubted.  Speaking 
of  that  future  of  perfected  reason  of  which  he  scarcely 
sees  the  dawn,  although,  sceptic  as  he  is,  he  does 
not  despair  of  it  in  the  future  of  humanity,  he  says: 
"  All  depends  for  a  man  on  the  time  when  he  comes 
into  the  world.  Though  I  came  too  late,  1  do  not 
regret  it,  for  I  have  had  Voltaire  ;  and  now,  though  I 
see  him  no  more,  I  read  him,  and  he  writes  to  me." 

The  journey  to  Prussia  in  1750,  and  his  attempt  to 
establish  himself  in  Berlin,  were,  as  we  have  seen,  a 
sad  campaign  for  Voltaire,  about  which  enough  has 
been  said  and  written,  and  from  which,  like  him,  we 


222  Doltaire. 

are  glad  to  escape  as  soon  as  possible.  On  his  return 
to  France,  he  was  like  a  man  who  feels  himself  over, 
conscious  of  bruises  on  all  his  limbs.  He  was  very 
undecided  on  the  choice  of  a  retreat;  we  find  him, 
successively,  at  Strasburg  (August,  1753),  at  Colmar,  at 
the  abbey  of  Senones,  at  Plombieres  in  the  Vosges, 
and  then  again  at  Colmar.  He  was  feeling,  at  a  dis- 
tance, the  pulse  of  opinion  about  him  in  Paris  ;  mean- 
while he  searched  for  some  frontier  region  where  he 
could  settle  in  safety.  A  year  went  by  in  observation 
and  restlessness;  he  was  then  in  his  sixty-first  year. 
He  went  to  Lyons  in  November,  1754,  to  confer  with 
his  friend  the  Marechal-Duc  de  Richelieu;  the  cold 
reception  he  met  with  from  the  archbishop.  Cardinal 
de  Tencin,  uncle,  nevertheless,  of  his  friend  d' Argental, 
made  him  realise  to  what  an  extent  he  was  compro- 
mised at  the  Court  of  France.  It  was  then  that  he 
made  the  decision  to  go  at  once  into  Switzerland  with 
his  niece,  Mme.  Denis.  He  settled  first  at  Lausanne 
and,  soon  after,  at  Les  Delices,  outside  the  gates  of 
Geneva. 

These  first  years  in  Switzerland  are  marked  by 
much  joy  and  gaiety.  Voltaire  felt  that  he  was  once 
more  free;  he  mingled  in  the  life  of  the  region,  and 
made  it  accept  his  own  life;  he  acted  his  comedies 
and  tragedies  at  home,  and  found  actors  at  hand,  and 
not  at  all  bad  ones,  for  the  principal  parts.  At  the 
same  time  he  renewed  a  close  correspondence  with 
his  friends  in    Paris,  d'Alembert   in   particular,   with 


IDoltalre*  223 

whom  he  began  an  intercourse  of  letters  that  never 
afterwards  ceased.  This  Correspondence  of  Voltaire 
with  d'Alembert  is  essential  as  giving  the  key  to 
his  life.  It  should  be  read  by  itself,  and  consecu- 
tively, as  it  appears  in  the  first  edition,  and  not  as  it 
is  given  in  the  Beuchot  edition,  where  it  is  fused  into 
the  general  Correspondence.  The  life  of  Voltaire 
was  a  comedy:  the  Correspondence  with  d'Alembert 
lets  us  see  behind  the  scenes  and  back  of  the  stage; 
the  rest  is,  more  or  less,  before  the  footlights. 

Voltaire  was  hardly  settled  in  Switzerland,  before  he 
began  to  send  to  d'Alembert  articles  for  the  Encyclo- 
pedie,  which  until  then  had  pursued  its  way  in  peace  and 
unmolested.  Voltaire  now  gave  d'Alembert  excellent 
literary  advice  on  the  method  of  carrying  on  such  an 
enterprise;  but  he  was  not  long  in  mingling  with  it 
counsels  of  another  order,  for  instance:  "  During  the 
war  of  the  parliaments  with  the  bishops,  sensible  peo- 
ple will  have  a  fine  chance;  you  will  have  freedom  to 
stuff  the  Encyclopedie  with  truths  it  would  not  have 
dared  to  utter  twenty  years  ago.  When  pedants  fight, 
philosophers  triumph."  The  squabbles  now  began. 
D'Alembert  who  wrote  the  article  Geneve  in  the  En- 
cyclopedie, calling  in  question  the  sincere  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  of  the  Protestant  ministers,  roused  public  opin- 
ion in  Geneva,  and  Voltaire,  being  on  the  spot,  was 
made  to  feel  it.  He  wrote,  nevertheless,  to  d'Alem- 
bert: "Do  not  retract,  do  not  seem  to  yield  to  these 
wretches  by    renouncing    the   Encyclopedie."       For 


224 


IDoltaire* 


d'AIembert  was   disgusted,   and   the  enterprise  was 
beginning  to  meet  with  serious  opposition  in  Paris. 
Here  Voltaire,   while  he  was  leading  in  Switzerland 
the  life  of  a  great  seigneur,  apparently  occupied  only 
with  pleasures  of  the  mind,  shows  himself,  in  his  let- 
ters to  d'AIembert,  as  the  ardent  organiser  of  all  that 
concerns   and  affects  the  common  cause.     In  every 
line  we  find  the  fervent  zealot,  the  grand-master,  or 
the   general-in-chief   haranguing   his   lieutenants,    of 
whom  d'AIembert  is,  in  Paris,  the  leader:  "I  cannot 
conceive  why  those  who  work  for  the  Encyclopedie 
do  not  assemble  and  declare  they  will  renounce  every- 
thing unless  they  are  sustained.      Make  yourselves  a 
body.  Messieurs;  a  body  is  always  respected.    .     .    . 
Rise  up,  and  you  will  be  masters." 

I  said  once  that  at  the  time  of  Montesquieu's  death 
the  army  of  the  men  of  Letters  was  neither  afoot  nor 
enrolled.  It  was  to  set  it  on  its  feet  that  Voltaire 
worked  ardently. 

Voltaire  in  his  youth  had  been  alone,  without  par- 
tisans, without  support;  the  recollection  of  his  life  so 
often  broken  up,  so  agitated,  made  him  feel  the  im- 
portance of  making  for  himself  a  party,  an  army, 
which  he  would  fain  organise  from  a  distance,  with- 
out putting  his  own  person  too  much  under  fire; 
hence  he  spurred  on  d'AIembert  and  his  friends.  The 
Encyclopedie,  which  rallied  the  men  of  Letters,  seemed 
to  him  an  excellent  opportunity.  When  the  existence 
of  that  heavy  machine  is  threatened,  he  talks  of  no- 


Doltaire.  225 

thing  but  of  rushing,  all  of  them,  sword  in  hand,  a 
"  square  battalion,"  to  defend  it.  But,  meanwhile,  he 
leads  a  free  and  joyous  life  in  his  country-house  on  the 
shores  of  the  lake,  and  invites  to  dinner  the  very  min- 
isters whose  susceptibility  and  conscience  d'Alembert 
has  wounded.  "  It  is  not  at  all  to  make  fun  of  them," 
he  writes,  "  but  one  must  be  polite.  You  can  scoff  at 
everything  and  be  gay." 

D'Alembert,  on  the  other  hand,  less  petulant  and 
more  stable,  plays  a  cool  game;  holding  back  Voltaire 
and  keeping  his  hold  upon  him;  often  excited  by  him, 
he,  in  turn,  excites  Voltaire  if  he  sees  him  relaxing, 
and  winds  him  up  again ;  he  irritates  him  through  his 
little  passions,  and  carefully  foments  his  anger;  he 
suggests  to  him,  by  name,  certain  victims.  All  this 
Correspondence  is  ugly ;  it  has  an  odour  of  schemes 
and  plots,  of  confederates  and  secret  societies.  From 
whatever  point  of  view  we  consider  it,  it  does  no 
honour  to  men  who  erected  falsehood  into  a  principle, 
and  who  regarded  contempt  for  their  fellows  as  the 
first  step  towards  enlightening  them:  "  Enlighten  and 
despise  the  human  race!"  Sad  trumpet-call,  but  it 
was  theirs.  "Advance,  with  a  sneer,  brethren,  in 
the  path  of  Truth!"  That  was  their  perpetual 
chorus. 

But  Voltaire,  who  had  been  caught  in  a  net  more 
than  once,  thought  best  to  be  on  his  guard.  His 
country-house,  Les  Delices,  was  too  near  Geneva;  it 
would  not  be  glorious  for  him  who  had  been  under 

VOL.  I. — 15. 


226  IDoltaire. 

the  claws  of  a  king  in  Berlin  to  fall  under  those  of  a 
little  republic  of  bourgeois  sovereigns:  "1  have  a 
house  in  the  neighbourhood  which  cost  me  more 
than  one  hundred  thousand  francs,"  he  writes  in 
January,  1757,  "but  they  have  not  yet  pulled  it 
down."  This  proves  that  the  idea  of  some  such 
danger  had  come  to  him.  It  was  then  that  he  began 
to  seek  more  than  one  abiding-place,  where  he  could 
make  his  home  at  various  times;  and  he  bought 
Ferney  (in  October,  1758),  which  became,  in  the 
end,  his  only  and  all-sufficient  residence. 

One  of  his  first  cares  in  his  retreat  was  to  bring  up, 
educate,  and  provide  a  dowry  for  the  grand-niece  of 
Corneille;  he  also  undertook  a  commentary  on  Cor- 
neille's  works.  Whatever  judgment  may  be  passed 
on  that  work  as  a  whole,  he  planned  it  for  a  good 
purpose,  and  began  it  with  great  zeal: 

"The  enterprise  is  a  delicate  one,"  he  writes  to  a  friend  in  Paris; 
"  I  must  give  an  opinion  on  thirty-two  plays;  1  consult  the  Academy 
by  every  post,  and  I  submit  all  my  opinions  to  it.  I  hope  that,  with 
this  precaution,  the  work  will  be  useful  to  Frenchmen  and  to  foreigners. 
One  must  give  oneself  all  the  occupation  one  can  to  make  life  support- 
able in  this  world.  What  would  become  of  us  if  we  wasted  our 
time  in  saying:  '  We  have  lost  Pondicherry  ' — '  the  king's  notes  have 
gone  down  sixty  per  cent,'  etc.?  .  .  .  You  will  admit  that  such 
talk  would  be  very  dull.  So  I  spend  my  life  in  planting,  building, 
commenting  on  Corneille,  trying  to  imitate  him  at  a  distance,  and  all 
to  escape  idleness.  .  .  .  The  farther  I  advance  in  life,  the  more 
I  find  work  necessary.  It  becomes,  in  the  long  run,  the  greatest  of 
pleasures,  and  takes  the  place  of  the  illusions  we  have  lost." 

In  all  that  1  have  written  of  Voltaire,  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  present  him,  not  completely,  but  in  his 


Doltaire,  227 

most  honourable  and  desirable  aspect;  without,  how- 
ever, concealing  the  other  side;  and  allowing  the  man 
himself  to  be  seen  in  his  verity. 

Voltaire  [or  rather,  Jean-Francois  Arouet,  for  "Vol- 
taire" was  a  mere  fancy  name  which  he  took  as  a 
youth  on  coming  to  make  his  way  in  Paris] — Voltaire 
in  his  youth  was  carried  along  and  favoured  by  cir- 
cumstances; he  never  failed  to  have  the  wind  astern 
of  him  from  the  day  when  Ninon  bequeathed  him 
"enough  to  buy  books"  to  the  day — the  first  serious 
and  painful  day  of  his  life — when  he  had  his  encoun- 
ter with  the  Chevalier  de  Rohan.  After  that,  the 
long  residence  at  Cirey  was  a  period  of  varied  study 
and  happiness.  W^hen  he  quitted  Prussia  after  his 
second  unfortunate  experience,  he  was  past  middle 
age,  and  the  man  of  all  others  best  endowed  and  best 
prepared  to  put  to  profit  the  leisure  of  the  retirement 
into  which  he  entered;  where  he  multiplied  produc- 
tions of  all  kinds  with  a  facility  and  an  abundance 
which  in  these  days  might  seem  less  astonishing,  but 
in  his  day  appeared  phenomenal.  His  health  even,  of 
which  he  was  always  complaining, — that  "  Voltairean 
constitution"  at  all  times  "sufficiently  robust  to  sus- 
tain the  most  active  labours  of  the  mind,  and  yet  too 
delicate  to  bear  any  other  sort  of  excess," — was  to  him 
a  precious  fund  which  he  managed,  under  an  air  of 
liberality,  with  a  truly  prudent  economy.  He  himself, 
in  one  of  the  prettiest  letters  in  the  general  "Collec- 
tion," has  reduced  to  its  true  value  the  exaggerated 


2  28  Doltaire. 

reputation  for  universal  intelligence  which  people  took 
pleasure  in  giving  him: 

"I  have  just  read  a  piece,"  he  writes  to  M.  Daquin,  censor  and 
critic  (1766),  "  in  which  you  assure  people  1  am  happy.  You  are  not 
mistaken;  I  think  myself  the  happiest  of  men;  but  1  ought  not  to  say 
so;  it  is  cruel  to  others. 

"You  quote  M.  de  Chamberlan,  to  whom  you  say  that  I  have 
written  that  all  men  are  born  with  an  equal  portion  of  intelligence. 
God  preserve  me  from  ever  writing  such  a  falsehood  !  1  have,  since  1 
was  twelve  years  old,  felt  and  thought  quite  the  contrary.  I  divined 
then  the  enormous  quantity  of  things  for  which  1  had  no  talent.  I 
know  that  my  organs  are  not  arranged  to  go  very  far  in  mathematics. 
I  have  proved  that  I  have  no  inclination  for  music.  God  has  said  to 
every  man  :  '  Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  ;  thou  shalt  not  go  farther.'  I 
have  some  turn  in  me  for  learning  the  European  languages  ;  none  at 
all  for  the  Orientals  :  Non  omnia  possumus  omnes.  God  gave  a  voice 
to  the  nightingales  and  the  sense  of  smell  to  dogs,  but  there  are  some 
dogs  that  have  none.  What  folly  to  imagine  that  every  man  could 
be  a  Newton!  Ah!  monsieur,  you  were  formerly  a  friend  of  mine; 
do  not  attribute  to  me  the  greatest  of  all  impertinences. 

"  When  you  have  anything  curious  in  the  Semaine  [a  sort  of  liter- 
ary review  published  by  M.  Daquin],  send  it  to  me.  Rely  upon  the 
esteem,  the  friendship  of  an  old  philosopher,  who  has  the  folly,  in 
truth,  to  think  himself  a  very  good  farmer,  but  who  has  not  that  of 
thinking  he  has  all  the  talents." 

When  Voltaire  is  in  the  right,  there  is  no  one  like 
him  for  giving  proof  of  it  lightly  and  easily.  His  was 
one  of  those  keen,  quick  minds  that  divine  more  than 
they  know,  which  have  not  the  patience  to  carry  a 
demonstration  to  its  end  but  often  grasp  at  first  sight 
a  great  truth,  and  succeed  in  expressing  it  in  a  man- 
ner that  delights  the  learned  themselves. 

We  are  not  to  suppose,  however,  that  Ferney 
changed  Voltaire;  he  was  of  those  who  learn  nothing 


IDoltaire.  229 

from  experience,  and  correct  themselves  very  little. 
He  lived  without  constraining  himself,  according  to 
his  whims  and  inclinations.  In  him  was  the  irre- 
ligious, anti-Christian  man,  whom  the  life  of  Ferney 
only  strengthened  by  security,  and  confirmed  in  his 
audacity.  This  characteristic  appears  in  his  most 
ordinary  letters;  they  have  all  a  charming  tone,  some- 
thing piquant  and  brisk,  with  a  graceful  air,  and  then, 
in  the  best  pages,  we  nearly  always  come  upon  a  touch 
of  license,  or  of  impiety,  that  makes  itself  felt,  even 
jokingly,  at  the  moment  we  least  expect  it.  Writing 
to  M.  Bordes  of  Lyons,  on  the  election  of  Clement 
XIV,  he  says  (July,  1769): 

"  I  don't  know  what  that  friar,  Ganganelli,  will  turn  out;  all  I  know 
is  that  Cardinal  de  Bernis  nominated  him  for  pope;  consequently,  he  will 
certainly  not  be  a  Sixtus  Fifth.  It  is  a  pity,  as  you  say,  that  they  did 
not  give  us  some  blunderhead.  We  needed  a  fool  and  1  am  afraid 
they  have  given  us  a  wise  man.  .  .  .  Abuses  are  never  corrected 
till  they  become  outrageous." 

Those  are  detestable  sentiments,  and  give  a  false 
view  of  the  real  interests  that  are  most  important  to 
men  united  in  society.  Very  imprudent  and  senseless 
is  he  who,  in  any  walk  of  life,  prays  for  excess  of 
evil  under  a  pretext  of  a  total  and  coming  reformation; 
and  complains  when  at  the  head  of  human  powers 
he  sees  moderation  and  wisdom. 

This  sam.e  M.  Bordes,  to  whom  Voltaire  thus  wrote, 
was  a  former  friend  of  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  who 
had  since  become  the  latter's  refuter  and  adversary. 
In  writing  to  him  of  Rousseau,  VoUaire  gives  way  to 


2  30  IDoltaire. 

his  antipathy  for  that  competitor  and  powerful  col- 
laborator, in  whom  he  persisted  in  seeing  only  a  mad- 
man whom  he  pitilessly  insults: 

"Ah!  monsieur,"  he  writes  to  M.  Bordes,  March,  1765,  "you  see 
now  that  Jean-Jacques  resembles  a  philosopher  as  a  monkey  resembles 
a  man.  .  .  .  People  are  rejecting  his  sophistries,  and  his  person 
is  held  in  horror  by  all  honest  men  who  have  sounded  his  character. 
What  sort  of  philosopher  is  a  mischief-maker  and  an  in- 
former ?  How  can  any  one  imagine  that  the  Corsicans  have  written 
to  him  ?  I  assure  you  there  is  nothing  in  it.  Let  us  leave  the  miser- 
able man  to  his  own  opprobrium.  Philosophers  do  not  count  him 
among  their  brethren." 

There  are  not  enough  insulting  words  in  his  vocab- 
ulary  with  which  to  blast  Rousseau;  he  is  "a  miser- 
able creature  whose  heart  is  as  ill-made  as  his  mind  " ; 
he  is  "the  dog  of  Diogenes  gone  mad."  In  a  letter 
to  M.  Thomassin  de  Juilly,  another  of  Rousseau's 
opponents,  he  says: 

"That  miserable  monkey  of  a  Diogenes,  who  thinks  he  has  taken 
refuge  in  the  old  planks  of  his  cask,  but  who  has  not  even  his  lantern, 
never  wrote  anything  with  either  good  sense  or  good  faith.  Provided 
he  can  sell  his  quack  medicines  he  is  satisfied.  You  call  him  Zoile; 
he  is  that  in  all  the  talents  and  all  the  virtues." 

But  in  all  this  violence  against  Rousseau  we  must 
not  see  jealousy.  Voltaire  was  never  jealous;  he  was 
passionate,  unjust,  and  in  the  present  case  he  yielded 
blindly  to  all  his  antipathies  of  taste  and  temper  against 
a  man  who  never  jested,  who  turned  everything,  not 
to  laughter,  but  to  bitterness;  who  wrote  with  exag- 
geration {emphase\,  whose  very  elevation  of  tone 
seemed  to  Voltaire  exaggeration,  and  who  declaimed 


IDoltaire.  231 

as  a  republican  against  the  arts,  the  stage:  "Remem- 
ber how  that  miserable  little  Jean-Jacques,  the  turn- 
coat, wrote  to  me  a  year  ago:  'You  corrupt  my 
Republic  in  return  for  the  asylum  she  has  given  you.'  " 
The  explanation  of  Voltaire's  contempt  for  Rousseau 
is  in  those  words.  He  understood  nothing  of  the 
ardent  earnestness  of  this  new  apostle,  or  of  his 
hold  upon  young  souls;  he  saw  only  a  grotesque 
being,  who  was  now  and  then  eloquent. 

Voltaire  was  not  a  democrat,  and  it  is  well  to  call 
this  to  the  minds  of  those  who,  at  this  distance,  and 
in  support  of  their  own  systems,  wish  to  give  us  a 
Voltaire  seasoned  with  Jean-Jacques.  When  one  likes 
to  study  men,  and  see  them  as  they  are,  one  cannot 
away  with  these  symbolised  statues  that  threaten  to 
be  the  idols  of  the  future.  Voltaire  was  against 
majorities,  and  he  despised  them;  in  the  matter  of 
sense,  the  masses  seemed  to  him  naturally  stupid; 
he  believed  that  good  sense  was  to  be  found  among 
the  few  only,  and  it  was  enough  for  him  if  by  degrees 
that  little  group  could  be  enlarged: 

"It  seems  by  the  late  riot,"  he  writes  to  M.  Bordes  (November, 
1768),  "  that  your  people  of  Lyons  are  not  philosophers;  but  provided 
honourable  men  are,  I  am  satisfied.  .  .  .  France  would  be  a  very 
pretty  country  to  live  in  were  it  not  for  the  taxes  and  the  pedants. 
As  for  the  populace,  they  will  always  be  silly  and  barbarous — witness 
what  has  happened  at  Lyons.  They  are  oxen  who  need  a  yoke,  a 
goad,  and  fodder." 

Miserable  words!  Voltaire  elsewhere  ridicules  the 
rumour  that  his  estate  at  Ferney  was  to  be  erected 


232  iDoItaire. 

into  a  marquisate:  "Marquis  Crebillon,  Marquis  Mar- 
montel,  Marquis  Voltaire!"  he  exclaims,  "good  for 
nothing  but  to  be  shown  at  the  fair  with  Nicolet's 
monkeys."  It  is  his  good  taste  which  scoffs  at  the 
title;  but  his  mind,  his  nature,  was  aristocratic,  and 
on  occasion  it  carried  him  far;  he  was  brutally  feudal. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  Revolution,  had  he  lived  to 
witness  it,  would  have  distressed  him  deeply;  one 
thing,  however,  is  very  certain,  the  horrors  and  the 
excesses,  which  mingled  from  the  first  with  useful  re- 
forms, would  not  have  surprised  him.  In  '93,  had  he 
been  present,  he  would  surely  have  said:  "  There  they 
are,  my  Gauls!  I  recognise  them!"  No  one  has  so 
vividly  and  frequently  exhibited  the  contrasts  that  are 
noticeable  in  the  character  of  Frenchmen  and  Parisians 
at  the  various  epochs  of  our  history.  Here  is  one 
passage,  among  a  dozen  others: 

"  I  have  always  found  it  difificult  to  conceive,"  he  writes  to  the 
father  of  Benjamin  Constant  in  January,  1776,  "how  a  nation  so 
agreeable  should  be  at  the  same  time  so  ferocious;  how  it  can  pass  so 
easily  from  the  Opera  to  a  Saint-Bartholomew,  be  sometimes  com- 
posed of  monkeys  dancing,  and  sometimes  of  bears  growling;  at  one 
and  the  same  time  so  intelligent  and  so  imbecile,  so  brave  and  so 
cowardly." 

And  again,  more  gaily  (September,  1770): — "I 
think  nothing  can  prevent  the  Pamphlet  of  La  Chalo- 
tais  from  appearing."  [The  solicitor-general  of  Brit- 
tany, accused  of  writing  anonymous  letters  to  Louis 
XV,  defended  himself  in  a  pamphlet.]    "The  public 


IDoltaire.  233 

will  laugh,  argue,  and  get  heated;  in  a  month  all  will 
be  over;  in  five  weeks  forgotten." 

it  must  be  a  Frenchman  as  French  as  Voltaire,  say- 
ing these  things  of  his  nation  of  those  and  former  days 
to  justify  a  Frenchman  of  to-day  in  repeating  them. 
Let  us  add,  in  order  to  be  accurate,  that  in  all  his 
pungent  and  sagacious  expressions  of  opinion,  capri- 
cious as  they  sometimes  were,  Voltaire  forgot,  or  did 
not  foresee,  a  gradual  softening  of  manners,  an  insensi- 
ble and  continual  progress,  to  which  he  himself  con- 
tributed. The  people  of  Paris  have  shown  in  our  day, 
and  even  in  periods  of  great  excesses,  that  they  are  no 
longer  the  same  as  the  unformed  masses  who  issued 
from  the  old  society  preceding  '89. 

On  settling  at  Ferney,  Voltaire  took  the  whole  of 
himself,  his  imagination  and  his  caprices,  his  principles 
of  agitation  and  of  restlessness,  with  him.  We  find 
him,  especially  in  the  first  years,  begetting  all  sorts  of 
bickerings,  even  with  his  own  happiness,  flying  into 
a  passion  about  his  eternal  Pticelle — for  if  he  did 
wrong  to  make  her,  she  punished  him  well — creating 
ideal  dangers,  fancying  that  Parliament  was  about  to 
proscribe  him,  keeping  his  trunks  packed  even  in 
mid-winter,  and  through  months  of  snow,  to  be  able 
to  spring  across  the  frontier,  if  need  be,  at  a  jump. 
But  after  a  while,  he  began  to  feel  more  secure,  thanks 
to  the  protection  of  the  Due  de  Choiseul  [prime  min- 
ister of  Louis  XV];  and  then  he  abandoned  himself 
with  incredible   ardour  to  the  pleasure   of  building, 


234  IDoltaire. 

planting,  peopling  his  neighbourhood,  establishing  in- 
dustries and  watch  factories,  introducing  joy,  health, 
and  ease  of  life.  He  obtained  for  his  manufactories  at 
Ferney  and  Versoix  certain  exemptions  which  fa- 
voured the  birth  of  his  little  colonies.  At  the  fall  of 
M.  de  Choiseul  he  was  able,  while  remaining  honestly 
faithful  to  the  dismissed  minister  —  the  ''illustrious 
Barmecide  "  as  he  called  him — to  obtain  the  protection 
of  Chancellor  Maupeou.  Voltaire  felt  no  aversion  to 
that  minister,  so  unpopular  in  Paris;  distance  served 
him  well,  and  enabled  him  to  see  justly  on  one  point 
at  least.  He  hated  the  Parliaments,  and  considered 
it  a  great  thing  to  have  got  rid  of  those  obsolete 
and  henceforth  restraining  bodies,  which  would  be  a 
perpetual  obstacle  to  all  ameliorations  and  reforms 
emanating  from  the  royal  power.  He  would  never 
have  advised  their  resuscitation.  But  it  was  not 
until  the  ministry  of  M.  Turgot  and  the  hopes  to 
which  the  accession  of  Louis  XVI  opened  the  way, 
that  Voltaire,  philosopher  and  farmer,  manufacturer 
and  labourer,  seemed  to  take  new  life.  His  letters  of 
this  period  show  very  plainly  the  old  man  of  eighty 
suddenly  rejuvenated,  exerting  himself  to  write  to  the 
reforming  minister  and  to  those  who  served  him, — 
Trudaine,  De  Vaines,  Dupont  de  Nemours,  etc., — and 
gaily  crying  out:  "We  are  in  the  Golden  Age  up  to 
our  necks!  " 

It  happened  to  Voltaire,  as  it  always  happens  natur- 
ally to  every  great  literary  renown  when  joined  to  a 


Doltairc,  235 

certain  social  position,  but  to  him  more  tiian  to  others 
because  of  his  prodigious  activity  and  the  startling 
proofs  he  gave  of  it,  that  every  one,  far  or  near, 
claimed  his  good  offices;  people  consulted  him,  re- 
lated the  wrongs  of  which  they  were  victims,  and 
solicited  the  help  of  his  pen  and  his  credit.  It  was 
not  at  Ferney  alone  that  request  after  request,  of  all 
forms  and  kinds,  poured  in  upon  him :  sometimes  it 
was  Lally-Tollendal,  pleading  with  him  to  rehabilitate 
the  memory  of  his  father;  then  it  was  the  directress  of 
a  theatre  at  Lyons  whose  license  had  been  with- 
drawn; to-day  it  was  one  thing,  to-morrow  another. 
Certainly  it  is  a  noble  idea,  which  cannot  be  wholly 
an  illusion,  that  the  more  a  man  is  cultivated  the  better 
and  kinder  he  must  necessarily  be;  and  that  in  a  lofty 
position,  with  a  reputation  made,  he  cannot  fail  to  be 
more  easily  impartial,  and  thus  owes  himself  to  all. 

Voltaire  seems  to  me,  judging  by  his  letters,  to 
have  busied  himself  actively  during  the  last  years  of 
his  life  with  the  public  welfare  of  the  region  about 
him,  and  also  with  the  private  interests  that,  from  far 
and  near,  appealed  to  him  for  help;  he  pleaded  con- 
tinually with  ministers  and  sub-ministers  in  behalf  of 
his  various  colonies,  for  whatever  could  give  security 
to  their  existence  and  add  to  their  comfort.  And  this, 
not  only  for  those  around  him  at  Ferney,  but  for  oth- 
ers at  a  distance,  who  had  trusted  themselves  to  him. 
He  is  the  benevolent  and  zealous  advocate  of  more 
than  one  good  cause.      What   in   earlier  years  may 


236  IDoItaire. 

have  seemed  feverish  excitement  became  in  the  end  a 
noble  solicitude  for  the  general  interests.  This  hon- 
ours his  old  age;  it  explains  why  the  world  has  ended 
by  attaching  to  his  name  a  fame  more  real  and  more 
grandiose  than  so  much  waywardness  and  incon- 
sistency would  seem  to  warrant. 


fIDabame  2)u  2)ctfan^. 


237 


flDa&ame  2)u  2)eCfan&. 

OF  late  many  of  our  classics  have  been  reprinted, 
and  some  wliicli  are  not  classics  at  all.  The 
letters  of  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  I  know  not 
why,  have  not  had  that  honour.  The  largest  collec- 
tion of  those  letters  was  published  for  the  first  time  in 
London,  in  1810,  from  the  manuscripts  found  among 
the  papers  of  Horace  Walpole.  This  edition  was  re- 
produced in  Paris  in  181 1,  1812,  and  1824,  with  some 
corrections,  and  also  certain  suppressions.  Since 
then,  no  one  has  taken  the  trouble  to  reprint  the 
text,  purgmg  it,  and  comparing  it  with  the  London 
edition  to  restore  the  parts  that  were  altered  or  sup- 
pressed. Yet  Mme.  Du  Deffand  well  deserved  that 
care;  for  she  is  one  of  our  classics  in  language  and  in 
thought,  and  one  of  the  most  excellent  of  them.  It 
is  this  characteristic  that  I  should  like  to  make  plain 
to-day. 

I  have  spoken  here  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  and  quite 
recently  of  Mme.  Sand.  Between  these  two  women, 
so  far  apart,  so  distant,  which  are  the  names  that 
really  count  ?  that  deserve  to  stand  in  the  first  rank  of 
women  celebrated  for  their  talent  as  writers  .?    By  the 

239 


240  /iDaDame  Du  BeffanD* 

side  of  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  with  less  imagination  in  her 
style  and  less  genius  for  detail,  but  gifted  with  a  poetic 
and  romantic  invention  full  of  tenderness,  and  an  in- 
comparable ease  and  accuracy  of  expression,  we  find 
Mme.  de  La  Fayette.  Then  we  have  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon,  just  mind,  sound  head,  agreeable  language, 
which  was  perfect  within  a  certain  defined  circle. 
At  the  other  extremity  of  the  chain  we  shall  find 
Mme.  de  Stael.  But  between  Mme.  de  Maintenon 
and  Mme.  de  Stael,  what  a  vacuum!  We  have,  to  be 
sure,  Mme.  de  Staal-Delaunay,  author  of  charming 
Memoirs,  a  solid  and  lofty  as  well  as  delicate  mind, 
but  she  did  not  live  long  enough,  and,  through  the 
circumstances  of  her  early  position,  she  never  mingled 
enough  in  the  full  centre  of  society  to  personify  it  to 
our  eyes. 

The  whole  eighteenth  century  would  therefore,  we 
may  say,  be  lacking  in  this  direction,  and  would  be 
represented  in  literature  only  by  women  of  unequal 
merit  and  of  mixed  taste,  were  it  not  for  Mme.  Du 
Deffand.  Mme.  Du  Deffand  belongs,  in  her  origin,  to 
the  period  of  Louis  XIV,  to  the  excellent  form  of 
language  that  resulted  from  it.  Born  in  1697,  dying 
in  1780,  she  passed  through  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  bold  opinions  of  which  her 
own  mind  anticipated  while  she  was  still  a  child. 
But  at  no  moment  during  her  life  was  she  led  away 
by  its  infiituations  of  doctrine,  by  its  metaphysical  or 
sentimental  jargon.     With  Voltaire,  she  is,  in  prose, 


MARQUISE  DU   DEFFAND. 
After  the  painting  by  Chardin. 


^a&ame  Bu  2)etfan&.  241 

our  purest  classic  of  that  epoch,  not  excepting  any 
one  of  its  great  writers. 

Born  of  a  noble  family  of  Burgundy,  Mile,  de 
Chamrond  received  a  very  irregular  and  very  in- 
complete education;  it  was  her  own  mind  alone  that 
worked  its  way.  It  is  related  that  in  a  convent  of  the 
rue  de  Charonne,  where  she  was  brought  up,  she 
early  conceived  doubts  on  matters  of  faith,  and  spoke 
of  them  freely.  Her  parents  sent  no  less  a  personage 
than  Massillon  to  correct  her.  The  great  preacher 
listened,  and  merely  said,  as  he  went  away:  "  She  is 
charming."  The  abbess  insisted  on  knowing  what 
book  she  ought  to  give  the  child  to  read.  Massillon 
replied,  after  a  moment's  thought:  "Give  her  a  five- 
sous  catechism."  And  they  could  get  nothing  further 
from  him.  He  seemed  to  despair  of  her  from  the  first 
day,  Mme.  Du  Deffand  had  one  peculiarity  at  least 
that  distinguished  her  among  the  free-thinkers  of  her 
time,  she  put  no  bravado  into  her  opinions;  she  felt 
that  the  philosophy  that  blazons  itself  ceases  to  be 
philosophy,  and  she  was  content  to  remain  in  perfect 
sincerity  with  herself.  When  Mile.  Aisse  in  dying 
asked  for  a  confessor,  it  was  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  aided 
by  Mme.  de  Parabere,  who  procured  him, 

Mme.  Du  Deffand  often  regretted  that  she  had  not 
had  a  different  education,  and  cursed  the  one  she  had 
received. 

"  People  often  ask  themselves,"  she  said,  "  if  they  would  live  their 
lives  again.     Oh!  I  would  not  be  a  young  girl  again  on  condition  of 

VOL.  I.  — 16. 


242  /IDaDame  H)u  2)etfan^. 

being  brought  up  as  1  was,  to  live  with  the  people  with  whom  I  lived, 
and  have  the  same  cast  of  mind  and  character  that  I  had;  I  should 
have  just  tlie  same  misfortunes  over  again.  But  I  would  willingly  go 
back  to  four  years  old  to  have  for  tutor  a  Horace     .     .     .     " ; 

and  thereupon  she  traces  a  plan  of  education  under 
an  enlightened,  well-informed  man,  such  as  her  friend 
Horace  Walpole.  The  plan  she  imagined  was  serious 
and  noble,  but  the  education  which  she  had  given 
herself,  or  rather  that  which  she  owed  to  nature  and 
experience,  made  her  an  exceptional,  and  far  more 
original  person.  What  she  really  was  would  never 
have  been  known,  nor  what  her  mind  was  worth  for 
clearness  and  rectitude  of  judgment,  if  she  had  not 
derived  all  she  was  from  herself.  At  all  times,  she 
was  one  who  least  asked  her  neighbour  what  she 
ought  to  think. 

They  married  her,  according  to  that  fine  custom,  to 
a  man  unsuited  to  her  except  by  birth.  She  judged 
him  at  a  first  glance,  took  a  dislike  to  him,  left  him, 
tried  now  and  again  to  live  with  him,  found  the  an- 
noyance too  great,  and  ended  by  allowing  herself 
frankly  all  the  misconduct  that  was  prejudicial  to 
respect,  even  in  that  society  of  relaxed  and  easy 
morality.  In  the  bloom  of  her  beauty  under  the 
Regency  she  inhaled  the  spirit  of  it.  She  was  the 
mistress  of  the  Regent,  and  of  many  others.  Going 
from  one  disappointment  to  another,  she  was  always 
trying  to  repair  her  last  error  by  some  new  experience. 
Later,  in  her  old  age,  quite  at  the  close  of  it,  we  see 


/iDa^ame  H)u  BefEanD,  243 

her  doing  all  she  can  lo  fill  the  voids  or  diversify  the 
monotony  of  old  acquaintances  by  gaining  new  ones; 
she  did  the  same  thing  with  her  lovers  during  the  first 
half  of  her  life. 

After  a  certain  period,  however,  we  find  her  estab- 
lished on  a  fairly  honourable  footing  of  regular  liaison 
with  President  Henault,  a  man  of  intelligence,  but 
incomparably  inferior  to  herself.  She  accommodates 
herself  to  him  finally,  as  sensible  persons  do  in  what 
is  called  a  marriage  of  reason.  About  this  time  (1740) 
Mme.  Du  Deffand  has  a  salon  which  becomes  a  centre. 
She  is  intimate  with  all  that  is  most  illustrious  in  Let- 
ters, and  in  the  great  world.  Long  the  friend  of  Vol- 
taire, she  is  also  that  of  Montesquieu  and  of  d'Alembert. 
She  knows  them  and  judges  them  in  their  persons 
and  in  their  characters  more  readily  than  in  their 
writings;  she  estimates  their  mind  at  its  source, 
without  devotion  to  any  of  them,  with  perfect  inde- 
pendence. If  she  reads  them  her  judgment  is  ex- 
pressed at  once  and  is  never  checked  by  any  outside 
consideration.  The  keenest  and  most  accurate  say- 
ings that  have  survived  about  the  celebrated  men  of 
her  day  were  said  by  her. 

The  distinctive  trait  of  her  mind  was  to  seize  upon 
the  truth,  the  reality  of  things  and  of  persons,  with- 
out illusion  of  any  kind.  "Is  it  not  intolerable,"  she 
said  of  the  factitious  society  about  her,  "  never  to  hear 
the  truth  .^"  And  then,  as  if  she  had  been  searching 
for  something  beyond  it,  when   she   discovers  that 


244  /iDaDame  S)u  DeffanD. 

truth,  that  reality,  she  is  not  satisfied:  disgust  and 
ennui  begin.  Ennui  vjsis  her  great  terror,  her  dreaded 
enemy.  With  an  ardent  nature  beneath  her  stiff, 
cold  air,  she  wished  to  repulse  that  mortal  ennui  at 
any  cost;  it  would  seem  as  if  she  bore  within  her 
some  nameless  instinct  that  was  ever  vainly  seeking 
its  object. 

One  of  the  persons  of  her  society  whom  she  most 
appreciated  was  the  Duchesse  de  Choiseul,  wife  of 
the  minister  of  Louis  XV,  a  good  and  virtuous 
woman,  well-conducted  and  withal  charming  ;  who 
had  no  other  defect  in  Mme.  Du  Deffand's  eyes  than 
that  of  being  too  perfect,  and  to  whom  she  wrote, 
one  day  : 

"  You  say  you  do  not  suffer  from  ennui,  dear  grandmamma  "  (the 
name  was  a  jest  between  them),  "  and  I  believe  it  because  you  say  it. 
'  Your  life'  you  add  'is  not  occupied  but  it  is  full.'  Permit  me  to 
tell  you  what  1  think  :  it  is  that  if  it  were  not  occupied  it  would  not 
be  full.  You  have  indeed  some  knowledge  of  life,  but  for  all  that, 
you  lack  one  experience  which  I  hope  you  will  never  have  :  it  is  the 
deprivation  of  sentiment  with  the  sorrow  of  not  being  able  to  do 
without  it." 

Here  we  touch  the  profoundly  sensitive  point  in  this 
nature,  thought  so  cold,  and  which  was  not  so.  It  is 
through  this  feeling  of  impotence  and  desire  that 
Mme.  Du  Deffand  makes,  in  a  way,  the  link  between 
the  eighteenth  century  and  ours.  Mme.  de  Main- 
tenon  was  also  a  victim  to  ennui,  but  with  her  it  was 
not  the  same,  it  was  far  more  reasonable.  If  I  did  not 
fear  to  commit  an  anachronism  of  language,  I  think  I 


/iDa^ame  H)u  S)etfan&.  245 

should  not  commit  a  moral  one  by  saying  that  there 
was  in  Mme.  Du  Deffand  what  was  hereafter  to  be  in 
Lelia,  but  a  Lelia  without  affectation. 

She  looked  about  her  for  that  resource  that  a  wo- 
man rarely  finds  in  herself  and  herself  only.  She 
sought  another,  or  rather  she  sought  no  longer.  She 
had  vainly  hoped  to  find  that  other  in  society  where 
her  inexorable  eye  saw  nothing  but  a  collection  of  ab- 
surdities, pretensions,  and  follies.  The  men  of  Letters 
of  her  time,  when  they  called  themselves  Voltaire, 
Montesquieu,  or  d'Alembert,  amused  her  fairly  well  ; 
but  in  none  of  them  was  there  enough  to  satisfy  her 
fully ;  their  atoms  and  hers  never  more  than  half  grap- 
pled. She  had  a  keen  attraction  of  mind  towards 
the  charming  Mme.  de  Staal-Delaunay,  whom  she  lost 
early.  Yet  she  had  one  true  friend,  Formont,  one 
habitual  friend,  President  Henault,  and  enough  social 
intimacies  to  fill  to  overflowing  a  less  exacting  being; 
but  the  whole  together  did  little  more  than  slightly 
amuse  her. 

During  a  journey  for  health  which  she  made  in  the 
summer  of  1742  to  the  Baths  of  Forges,  she  wrote 
several  letters  to  President  Henault,  receiving  a  goodly 
number  from  him.  We  have  this  correspondence, 
which  is  curious  in  tone.  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  scarcely 
arrived  at  Forges,  awaits  the  president's  letters  with 
an  eagerness  not  to  be  imagined,  and  from  it  she  de- 
duces proofs  of  the  liking  she  has  for  him,  lest  he 
should  be  ignorant  of  it : 


246  /IDa^ame  2)u  S)etfanD. 

"I  see  with  sorrow  that  I  am  as  susceptible  of  ennui  as  of  old  ; 
but  1  comprehend  that  the  life  1  lead  in  Paris  is  more  agreeable  than  1 
thought,  and  I  should  be  extremely  unhappy  if  1  had  to  renounce  it. 
Conclude  from  this  that  you  are  as  necessary  to  me  as  life  itself,  inas- 
much as  I  prefer  to  be  with  you  than  with  all  the  other  persons  whom 
I  see  ;  this  is  not  a  blandishment  that  I  am  saying  to  you,  it  is  a 
geometrical  demonstration  that  I  give  you." 

To  these  sweet  words  of  so  reasonable  a  kind,  the 
president  responds  by  gallantries  in  his  style,  which  is 
not  always  very  delicate.  He  gives  her  news  of  the 
Court,  and  of  his  own  suppers  :  "My  supper  was 
excellent,  and,  what  will  surprise  you,  we  all  amused 
ourselves.  I  own  that  after  it,  had  I  known  where  to 
find  you,  I  should  have  gone  in  search  of  you;  the 
weather  was  fine,  the  moon  was  beautiful.  .  .  ." 
We  can  fancy  how  Mme.  Du  Deffand  teased  him 
about  the  moon;  she  reduced  that  flash  of  sentiment 
to  its  due  value,  and  while  trying  to  say  a  few  pleas- 
ant words,  she  gives  the  key  to  her  whole  physical 
and  moral  nature  :  '"Ni  temperament,  ni  roman," 
she  tells  him  plainly  :  "  Indifference  physically,  and 
morally  no  romance." 

Add  to  the  above  a  consuming  activity  that  knew 
not  how  to  satisfy  itself,  and  you  will  begin  to  com- 
prehend her. 

Such  she  was  at  the  age  when  the  last  rays  of  youth 
expire.  About  a  dozen  years  later  she  began  to  feel 
that  her  sight  was  gradually  failing,  and  to  foresee  in 
the  near  future  a  dreadful  blindness.  Pursued  by  the 
idea  of  solitude  and  eternal  ennui,  she  attempted  to 


/IDa^ame  Du  DettanD.  247 

find  a  companion  in  Mile,  de  Lespinasse.  The  story 
is  well  known:  the  young  companion,  after  a  few 
years,  quarrelled  with  her  patroness,  and  carried  off  a 
part  of  the  latter's  circle  of  friends,  d'Alembert  at  their 
head.  This  defection  made  a  great  noise,  and  divided 
society  into  two  camps.  Every  one  took  sides  for 
or  against  Mile,  de  Lespinasse;  in  general,  youth 
and  learning,  and  the  Encyclopaedists  en  masse,  were 
for  her.  What  can  be  said  is,  that  the  union  could 
not  last  between  these  two  women  when  each  put 
much  of  herself  into  it.  They  both  had  too  much 
intellect,  minds  too  exacting,  and  they  belonged  to 
two  different  generations.  Mme.  Du  Deffand  repre- 
sented the  century  before  Jean-Jacques,  before  the 
romantic  inspiration;  her  maxim  was:  "The  tone  of 
romance  is  to  passion  what  copper  is  to  gold."  Mile, 
de  Lespinasse  was  one  of  that  second  half  of  the 
century  into  which  romance  entered  in  full  force. 
The  divorce,  sooner  or  later,  was  sure  to  come. 

Mme.  Du  Deffand,  now  blind,  had  an  apartment 
in  the  convent  of  Saint-Joseph,  rue  Saint-Dominique, 
the  same  formerly  occupied  by  the  foundress,  Mme. 
de  Montespan.  She  was  sixty-eight  years  old;  she 
lived  in  the  great  world  as  if  she  were  not  afflicted 
with  the  saddest  infirmity,  forgetting  it  as  much  as 
she  could,  and  striving  to  make  others  forget  it  by 
force  of  skill  and  charm: — rising  late,  turning  night 
into  day,  giving  suppers  at  home,  or  supping  out  in 
company,  having   for    intimates   President    Henault, 


248  /IDa^ame  Du  H)effan&. 

Pont-de-Veyle,  the  circle  of  the  Choiseuls  (to  whom 
she  was  related),  the  Marechales  de  Luxembourg  and 
de  Mirepoix,  with  many  others  whom  she  cared  for 
more  or  less — this  was  her  life  when,  in  the  autumn 
of  1765,  there  arrived  in  Paris  an  Englishman,  highly 
distinguished  for  intellect,  Horace  Walpole.  This  was 
the  great  event,  literary  and  romantic  (that,  for  once, 
is  the  right  word),  of  Mme.  Du  Deffand's  life,  the  one 
to  which  we  owe  her  only  letters  of  real  feeling  and 
all  that  makes  us  know  her  best. 

This  blind  old  woman  fell  in  love,  instantly,  with 
the  keen,  bold,  delicate,  and  brilliant  mind  of  Horace 
Walpole,  cut  out  on  a  pattern  she  had  not  seen  for 
fifty  years.  She  perceived  in  him  the  qualities  proper 
to  a  man  so  distinguished  in  himself,  and  also  those 
of  the  powerful  race  to  which  he  belonged :  she  was 
grateful  for  them  all;  and  she  who  had  never  loved 
with  love,  who  had  had  caprices  only  and  no  romance, 
who,  in  the  matter  of  friendship,  could  count  but 
three  serious  ones  in  her  whole  life, — Formont  and  two 
women,  one  of  whom  had  deceived  her, — she,  this 
moralist  of  satirical  temper,  became  suddenly  tender, 
emotional  as  well  as  amused,  full  of  active,  passionate 
solicitude;  she  no  longer  belonged  to  herself.  In 
short,  blind  and  sixty-eight  years  of  age,  sjie  gave 
her  heart,  and  this  time  (for  the  rarity  of  the  thing) 
she  gave  it  to  an  Englishman,  much  distinguished  and 
welcomed  by  society,  a  man  of  fifty,  whose  mother 
she  could  very  well  have  been,  whose  life  was  lived 


/IDaDame  Bu  S)effan^.  249 

away  from  her,  and  whom  she  greatly  embarrassed 
by  her  vivacious  tenderness.  So  true  is  it  that  she 
was  destined,  as  some  one  said,  to  be  wise  in  judg- 
ment, and  always  foolish  in  conduct. 

But  as  for  me,  I  do  not  think  it  folly ;  for  it  shows  a 
noble  side  in  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  which  uplifts  her,  and 
proves  that  while  she  had  economised  her  sensibility 
until  then,  she  was  not  without  it,  and  was  even 
capable  of  passion.  In  fact,  if  we  pardon  Mme.  de 
Sevigne  for  having  loved  her  daughter  to  idolatry, 
we  must  also  pardon  Mme.  Du  Deffand  for  having 
felt  for  Walpole  a  passion  one  knows  not  how  to 
qualify,  which  entered  through  her  mind  into  her 
heart,  and  was  fervent,  lofty,  and  pure. 

The  first  time  that  Horace  Walpole  saw  her  in 
Paris,  he  wrote  of  her  to  one  of  his  friends  (October 
6,  1765).  After  a  few  details  as  to  his  own  variations 
of  humour  and  impressions  since  his  arrival,  he  goes 
on  to  say: 

"  I  now  begin,  in  English  fashion,  to  claim  the  right  of  doing  as  I 
please.  1  laugh,  1  say  what  comes  into  my  head,  and  1  oblige  others 
to  listen  to  me.  There  are  two  or  three  houses  in  which  1  am  wholly 
on  that  footing.  ...  I  pay  no  tribute  to  their  great  authors  of 
the  day.  Every  woman  here  has  two  or  three  who  never  budge  from 
her  salon.  .  .  .  Old  President  Henault  is  the  pagod  in  that  of 
Mme.  Du  Deffand,  a  blind  old  woman,  a  debauchee  of  mind,  with 
whom  I  supped  last  night.  The  president  is  almost  completely  deaf 
and  has  more  than  run  his  course." 

In  writing  thus  he  little  thought  that  she  whom  he 
called  "a  debauchee  of  mind  "  was  to  feel  for  himself 


250  /iDaDame  H>u  BetCanD. 

a  true  passion  of  the  mind,  and  that  this  passion  in 
her  would  become  a  passion  of  the  heart,  perhaps  the 
only  one  she  had  ever  experienced,  which  would  last 
fifteen  years,  as  living  on  the  last  day  as  on  the  first. 

Except  for  a  certain  number  of  letters  of  Mme.  Du 
Deffand  to  Horace  Walpole,  and  from  Voltaire  to  her, 
by  far  the  longest  "  Correspondence  "  of  hers  that  we 
possess  is  one  that  passed  regularly  between  three 
persons:  Mme.  Du  Deffand  herself,  the  Duchesse  de 
Choiseul,  and  the  Abbe  Barthelemy.  The  Due  de 
Choiseul  does  not  appear  in  it,  except  by  a  few  very 
short  notes,  but  there  is  mention  of  him  in  nearly 
every  letter. 

The  correspondence,  begun  in  May,  1761,  during 
the  great  days  of  M.  de  Choiseul's  ministry,  is  con- 
tinuous and  lasts  without  interruption  or  slackening 
till  August  20,  1780,  one  month  before  Mme.  Du  Def- 
fand's  death.  It  becomes  very  eager  and  animated 
after  the  fall  of  the  Due  de  Choiseul  and  his  exile  to 
Chanteloup.  It  may  even  be  said  that  we  do  not 
know  the  life  at  Chanteloup  and  that  triumphant 
exile,  or  form  a  just  and  complete  idea  of  it  until  we 
have  read  these  letters,  which  are  like  a  confidential 
bulletin,  in  which  the  enthusiasm  of  intimate  friends 
and  interested  persons  never  weakens  for  a  moment. 

The  new  element  in  this  "Correspondence"  is  the 
Duchesse  de  Choiseul,  whom  we  already  knew  for 
her  mixture  of  grace  and  good  sense  through  the  uni- 
versal testimony  of  her  contemporaries,  but  never  to 


^aDame  H)u  DeffanD.  251 

the  degree  in  which  her  natural  self  is  shown  in  this 
series  of  lively,  witty,  sensible,  serious,  even  logical 
letters,  and  impassioned,  too,  whenever  the  fame  and 
interests  of  her  husband  are  in  question.  The  Abbe 
Barthelemy,  the  guest  of  Chanteloup,  the  friend  who 
has  given  himself  once  for  all  ;  and  whom  the  spell 
has  irrevocably  bound,  also  appears  to  advantage,  and 
is  seen  in  all  the  aspects  of  his  character,  the  most 
polished  of  learned  men,  amiable  and  estimable,  gay 
and  moderate,  a  "good  fellow,"  all  things  to  all  men, 
a  social  treasure,  having  hours,  however,  when  he 
regrets,  under  his  breath,  the  independence  of  his 
former  life,  and  the  free  delights  of  study. 

The  one  who  gains  least  is  Mme.  Du  Deffand  ;  and 
yet,  all  things  considered,  she  does  not  lose,  for,  as  the 
intelligent  editor  of  the  "Correspondence"  remarks, 
she  appears  such  as  her  well-wishers  liked  to  see  her, 
"  less  sensible  than  affectionate,  and  more  discouraged 
than  incapable  of  loving  others  or  herself."  She  is 
full  of  ennui;  she  judges  herself,  and  more  severely 
than  is  needed  ;  she  distrusts  others,  but,  above  all, 
herself ;  she  does  not  think  it  possible  that  any  one 
can  truly  love  her:  at  the  most  she  admits  they  endure 
her.  "  I  cannot  be  a  burden  to  you,"  she  repeats  in- 
cessantly to  Mme.  de  Choiseul,  who  wants  her  to 
stay  at  Chanteloup  :  "  I  cannot  contribute  to  pleasure 
or  to  amusement ;  I  should  owe  it  to  your  goodness, 
— I  will  say  the  word — to  your  compassion,  to  suffer 
me  near  you  ! "     She  was  only  half  mistaken  :  the 


252  /lDa&ame  S)u  H)eftanD. 

Duchesse  de  Choiseul,  in  sending,  later,  this  collection 
of  letters  to  M.  Beausset  (the  future  Cardinal),  said  : 
"The  letters  of  Mme.  Du  Deffand  have  the  charm  of 
naturalness,  the  choicest  expressions,  and  depth  of 
sentiment  in  ennui.  Poor  woman!  I  still  pity  her." 
Pity,  that  was  the  feeling  she  inspired.  "Poor  wo- 
man !  "  are  still  the  words  that  come  most  naturally  to 
our  minds  after  reading  her  letters  ;  but  we  ought  in- 
stantly to  add  :  "clear  and  upright  judgment,  ex- 
cellent mind,  language  still  more  excellent." 

Mme.  de  Choiseul  was  sketched  by  Horace  Wal- 
pole  in  a  few  strokes  that  are  indeed  those  of  a 
painter  who  was  the  compatriot  of  Spencer  and  of 
Shakespeare  : 

"  My  last  new  passion,  and  also,  1  think,  the  strongest,"  he  writes 
during  a  visit  to  Paris  (January,  1766),  "  is  the  Duchesse  de  Choiseul. 
Her  face  is  pretty  but  not  very  pretty  ;  her  person  is  a  little  model. 
Gay,  modest,  full  of  attentions,  with  the  happiest  propriety  of  expres- 
sion and  the  greatest  vivacity  of  reason  and  of  judgment,  you  might  take 
her  for  the  Queen  of  an  Allegory.  A  lover,  if  she  was  the  sort  of 
woman  to  have  one,  might  desire  that  the  allegory  should  end,  but  as 
for  us,  we  say:  Let  it  never  end!  " 

And  again,  in  a  subsequent  letter  : 

"The  Duchesse  de  Choiseul  is  not  very  pretty,  but  she  has  fine 
eyes  ;  she  is  a  little  wax  model,  who,  for  some  time,  was  not  allowed 
to  talk,  being  thought  incapable  of  it,  and  having  both  shyness  and 
modesty.  The  Court  has  not  cured  her  of  modesty ;  her  shyness  is 
redeemed  by  the  most  touching  tones  of  voice,  and  is  soon  forgotten  in 
the  elegant  turn  and  exquisite  propriety  of  her  expressions.  Oh  !  she 
is  indeed  the  most  dainty,  the  most  lovable,  the  most  gracious  little 
being  that  ever  issued  from  a  fairy's  egg.  So  true  in  her  words,  in 
her  thoughts  ;  so  considerate,  so  kindly  by  nature!  Everyone  loves 
her,  except  her  husband,  who  prefers  his  own  sister,  the  Duchesse  de 


/IDa^ame  2)u  lDeftan&.  253 

Grammont,  a  tall  amazon,  proud,  haughty,  who  loves  and  hates  ac- 
cordins;  to  her  caprices,  and  is  detested.  Mme.  de  Choiseul,  passion- 
ately in  love  with  her  husband,  has  been  the  martyr  of  this  preference; 
she  has  ended  by  submitting  with  a  good  grace  ;  she  has  gained 
some  influence  over  him  in  consequence,  and  is  thought  still  to  adore 
him. — But  1  suspect,"  adds  Walpole,  "  that  she  takes  too  much  pains 
to  make  it  believed." 

In  this  Walpole  was  mistaken.  The  attitude  of  Mme. 
de  Choiseul  was  in  accordance  with  the  truth  ;  she 
continued  very  sincerely,  very  tenderly,  in  love  with 
the  man  of  whom  she  was  proud,  of  whom  she  said 
that  not  only  was  he  "  the  best  of  men  but  the  great- 
est that  the  century  had  produced,"  and  of  whom  she 
wrote  one  day,  with  charming  artlessness  :  "  It  seems 
to  me  that  he  is  beginning  to  be  less  ashamed  of  me  ; 
and  it  is  a  great  point  gained  no  longer  to  wound  the 
self-love  of  those  by  whom  we  want  to  be  loved." 
She  had  reason  to  congratulate  herself  on  the  exile  to 
Chanteloup,  and  was,  perhaps  the  only  one  fully  to 
enjoy  its  brilliant  peace  ;  she  saw  in  it  the  means  of 
keeping  near  her  the  object  of  her  worship  and,  if  not 
to  reconquer  him  wholly,  at  least  to  possess  him,  to 
hold  him  in  her  hand,  and  not  to  lose  sight  of  him  for 
a  single  day. 

One  fundamental  pleasantry  runs  through  this 
"Correspondence,"  and  gives  the  tone  to  it.  Mme. 
Du  Deffand  had  had  a  grandmother,  who  had  married, 
as  her  second  husband,  a  Due  de  Choiseul;  she  had 
had,  therefore,  a  Duchesse  de  Choiseul  as  a  "grand- 
mamma."   Born  herself  some  thirty-five  or  forty  years 


254  /IDat)ame  S)u  BcffanD. 

before  the  present  Duchesse  de  Choiseul,  she  amused 
herself  by  inverting  the  roles  and  the  ages,  calling  the 
duke  and  the  duchess  "grandpapa"  and  "grand- 
mamma," while  they  called  her  their  "granddaugh- 
ter." That  is  the  alpha  and  omega  of  all  their  letters; 
it  is  the  pretext  for  much  pretty  jesting  and  childish  non- 
sense when  there  was  nothing  better  to  write  about. 
Would  you  see  a  Duchesse  de  Choiseul  at  Ver- 
sailles, as  the  wife  of  a  prime  minister,  in  grand  toilet 
and  in  all  her  pomp  ;  courted,  surrounded,  wearied 
with  homage  and  civilities,  without  a  moment  to  her- 
self, and  trying  to  describe  to  her  "granddaughter" 
at  odd  moments  her  hurried  morning,  her  crowded 
day  ?— Mme.  Du  Deffand  had  spoken  to  her  in  one 
letter  of  certain  persons  from  Versailles  whom  she 
saw  in  Paris,  and  with  whom  she  had  promised  to 
have  Mme.  de  Choiseul  sup  on  her  next  visit  to  Paris; 
this  is  the  answer  : 


"Spare  me,  my  dear  child,  those  Versailles  people  ;  it  is  now,  as 
you  truly  say,  five  months  that  I  have  been  here.  .  .  .  The 
more  people  you  invite,  the  more  1  shall  be  hindered  from  seeing  you 
— I  am  hindered  now  in  the  pleasure  of  writing  to  you;  I  am  made 
desperate.  I  have  just  torn  myself  out  of  bed  to  have  the  dressing  of 
my  hair — begun  yesterday — finished  :  four  heavy  hands  are  on  my 
poor  head.  And  that  is  not  the  worst  for  it — I  hear  tongs  at  my  ears, 
and  curl-papers — it  is  too  hot  !  .  .  .  '  What  jewels  will 
Madame  put  on  to-day  ?  '  .  .  .  '  Those  go  best  with  such  or 
such  a  gown.'  .  .  .  '  Angelique,  bring  the  headdress  ' — 'Mari- 
anne, prepare  the  panier ' — You  understand  that  it  is  the  supreme 
authority,  Tintin,  who  gives  these  orders.  She  has  had  much  trouble 
in  cleaning  my  watch  with  an  old  glove  ;  she  now  wants  me  to  see 
that  the  inside  is  still  black.     But  that  is  not  all  :  a  soldier  perorates 


/IDa^ame  H)u  2)eftan^.  255 

about  the  expulsion  of  the  Jesuits;  two  doctors  are  talking,  I  believe, 
about  war — or  else  they  are  making  it  on  each  other ;  an  archbishop 
is  showing  me  an  architectural  decoration  ;  this  one  wants  to  attract 
my  eyes,  that  other  one  to  occupy  my  mind,  and  all  to  obtain  my  at- 
tention :  you  alone  interest  my  heart. — They  are  calling  to  me  from 
the  next  room :  '  Madame  !  it  has  struck  the  three-quarters  ;  the  king 
will  be  going  to  Mass ' — Quick  !  quick  !  my  cap,  my  hood,  my  muff, 
my  fan,  my  book  !  I  must  not  scandalise  any  one  ;  quick  !  my 
chair,  my  porters,  and  off  we  go  ! — I  return  from  Mass  ;  a  woman,  a 
friend  of  mine,  comes  in  as  soon  as  I  do.  She  is  in  full-dress  ;  my 
very  little  cabinet  is  filled  up  with  the  vastitude  of  her  hoop.  She 
tells  me  to  continue  what  I  am  doing:  '  1  cannot,  madame  ;  I  would 
not  be  so  much  my  own  enemy  as  to  deprive  myself  of  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  you  and  listening  to  you.  ...  At  last  she  is  gone  !  I 
resume  my  letter — but  here  they  come  to  say  that  the  courier  to  Paris 
is  just  starting,  has  Madame  any  commands  ?  '  Oh,  yes,  yes  !  I  am 
just  writing  to  my  dear  child  ;  tell  him  to  wait.'  Here  a  little  Irish 
girl  comes  and  solicits  me  to  procure  her  a  favour,  which  I  shall  not 
obtain  for  her  ;  a  manufacturer  from  Tours  comes  to  thank  me  for  a 
benefit  I  did  not  procure  for  him.  Some  one  is  presenting  to  me  his 
brother,  whom  1  do  not  see  ;  there  is  no  one,  down  to  Mademoiselle 
Pels  [a  famous  opera  singer]  who  does  not  come  here  to  see  me. — 

"I  hear  the  drums:  the  chairs  in  my  antechamber  are  knocked 
over,  the  officers  of  the  Swiss  guard  rush  into  the  courtyard. 

"The  mattre  d'hotel  comes  to  ask  if  1  wish  dinner  to  be  served; 
he  informs  me  that  the  salon  is  full  of  people,  that  Monsieur  has  come 
in  and  demands  dinner.  Well,  well,  I  must  end.  There  is  the  exact 
picture  of  what  1  experienced  yesterday  and  to-day  in  writing  to  you 
— and  at  nearly  all  times.  Judge  if  I  am  not  weary  of  people,  and 
whether  you  ought  to  give  yourself  the  trouble  to  procure  me  more; 
judge  also  how  I  love  you  to  keep  on  writing  to  you,  and  how  pro- 
voked, out  of  patience,  pulled  about,  and  harassed  your  poor  grand- 
mamma is!     Pity  her,  love  her,  and  you  will  console  her  for  all." 

But  this  is  only  the  great  lady  in  the  days  of  her 
ministerial  state;  I  prefer  her  in  her  later  days  of  tran- 
quillity and  active  good  sense.  It  is  worth  while  then 
to  hear  this  pretty  little  person,  this  pretty  thing,  with 
her   dainty  wax  face,  grow  animated,   and  talk  of 


256  /iDaDame  Du  H)etfanO» 

public  affairs,  literature,  authors,  Rousseau,  Voltaire, 
the  Empress  Catherine,  putting  them  all  in  their  true 
light;  talking,  descanting  (for  she  does  descant  now 
and  then  when  she  feels  at  her  ease,  and  it  is,  perhaps,  a 
fault) ;  we  ought  to  hear  her  in  such  moments  become 
indignant,  rebellious,  breathing  forth  fire  and  flame; 
she  has  no  hesitation  then,  nor  any  shyness;  she  says 
all  she  thinks,  all  she  has  in  her  heart;  her  reflections 
overflow  like  a  restrained  passion.  She  is  a  marvel  to 
Mme.  Du  Deffand  and  the  "great  abbe,"  and  as  for 
us,  she  amazes  us.  She  has  maxims,  principles,  which 
contrast  with  her  period,  with  her  youth,  with  her 
childlike  air: 

"  Let  us  above  all,"  she  says,  "  distrust  those  who  oppose  them- 
selves with  such  rancour  against  what  they  call  the  prejudices  adopted 
in  society.  If  they  would  examine  societies,  they  would  see  that 
laws  can  foresee  and  be  enacted  against  actual  things  only;  they  may 
be  the  terror  of  criminals  and  the  curb  on  crimes,  but  prejudices  are 
the  only  curb  on  morals.  Now  governments  are  founded  equally  on 
morals  and  on  laws;  destroy  either  the  one  or  the  other,  and  you 
overthrow  the  edifice. 

"  The  employment  of  the  mind  to  the  injury  of  public  order  is  one 
of  the  greatest  wickednesses,  because,  by  its  nature,  it  is  the  most  un- 
punishable, or  the  most  unpunished;  yet  it  is  the  most  dangerous, 
because  the  coil  it  produces  is  extended  and  promulgated  by  the  very 
penalty  inflicted  on  the  guilty,  and  for  centuries  after.  That  species 
of  crime  is  a  seed  sown;  it  is  the  tares  of  the  Gospel. 

"  A  true  citizen  will  serve  his  country  best  by  his  mind  and  by  his 
talents,  but  he  will  not  write  on  the  social  contract  in  a  way  to  make 
us  doubt  the  legitimacy  of  Governments,  and  to  load  us  with  chains 
the  weight  of  which  we  have  never  yet  felt.  I  have  always  mis- 
trusted that  Rousseau,  with  his  singular  systems,  his  extraordinary 
accoutrements,  and  his  pulpit  of  eloquence  perched  on  the  roofs  of 
houses;  he  has  always  seemed  to  me  the  charlatan  of  virtue." 


/iDaOame  Du  H)etfant>.  257 

Mme.  Du  DefTand  was  shocked  by  a  passage  in  an 
article  by  Freron,  in  which  he  spoke  "insolently"  of 
Horace  Walpole  in  relation  to  Walpole's  mystifying 
letter  to  Jean-Jacques.  She  complained  to  her  "grand- 
papa," then  prime  minister,  in  order  that  he  might 
castigate  Freron;  at  which  Horace  Walpole,  when  he 
heard  of  it  was  much  annoyed:  "We  love  so  much 
the  liberty  of  the  press,"  he  wrote,  "that  I  would 
rather  be  maltreated  by  it  than  see  it  suppressed." 
All  that  Freron  had  done,  moreover,  was  to  report  a 
book  translated  from  the  English ;  there  was  no  other 
blame  that  could  be  laid  on  him;  "In  strict  justice," 
said  M.  de  Choiseul,  "  it  is  the  censor  who  did  wrong 
and  not  Freron;  however,  they  shall  both  be  cor- 
rected." Mme.  de  Choiseul  had  been  set  to  work  on 
this  affair,  but  she  soon  felt  that  she  had  better  be  in- 
volved as  little  as  possible  in  such  squabbles,  in  which 
plenty  of  others  took  pleasure: 

"  Let  us  not  thrust  ourselves  into  literary  quarrels,  my  dear  child," 
she  writes;  "  if  we  did  so  at  first,  it  was  only  to  pull  your  friend  out, 
and  not  to  mingle  in  it  ourselves;  such  quarrels  are  good  for  nothing 
but  to  depreciate  talent  and  bring  to  light  absurdities.  But — be- 
tween ourselves  be  it  said— it  ought  to  be  rather  pleasant  for  us  to  see 
the  tyrants  of  our  opinions  destroying  each  other  by  the  same  argu- 
ments they  use  to  subjugate  our  minds.  That  is  the  surest  way  to 
enable  us  to  escape  their  dominion  while  profiting  by  their  lights." 

Mme.  Du  Deffand  was  really  of  the  same  opinion. 
Since  the  defection  of  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  who  had 
withdrawn  from  her,  carrying  with  her  certain  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Encyclopaedists,  she  was  much  opposed 

VOL.   I. 17. 


2s8  /IDat>ame  2)u  2)etEan&, 

to  whatever  resembled  partisan  interests  either  in 
philosophy  or  in  literature.  But  as  Voltaire,  with 
malicious  pleasure,  tried  to  provoke  Walpole  and 
bring  him,  by  pique  or  by  prodding,  to  a  discussion 
on  the  merits  of  Racine  and  Shakespeare,  and  as, 
moreover,  he  seemed  in  the  humour  to  wrangle  with 
the  two  ladies  on  the  subject  of  La  Bletterie,  whom 
they  protected  and  he  disliked,  Mme.  de  Choiseul 
wrote  again  to  her  old  friend: 

"  I  think  that  we  should  do  well  to  let  him  alone;  as  for  me,  1  do 
not  want  to  enter  upon  a  literary  dispute;  I  do  not  feel  myself  in  a 
condition  to  make  head  against  Voltaire.  Besides,  the  animadversion 
of  men  of  Letters  seems  to  me  more  dangerous  than  the  plague.  I 
like  Letters,  I  honour  those  who  make  them  a  profession,  but  1  desire 
their  society  only  in  their  books;  I  find  them  good  to  see  in  their 
portraits  only. — I  hear  the  granddaughter  saying:  'Grandmamma  is 
right;  she  seems  to  have  all  my  experience.'  Admit,  dear  child,  that 
none  of  them,  except  our  very  dear  and  good  abbe,  is  without  venom; 
he  is,  because  he  keeps  his  superiority  for  himself,  his  fine  mind  for  us, 
and  his  kind  spirit  for  everybody.  But  he  fears  men  of  Letters  as 
much  as  we  do." 

Thus  Mme.  de  Choiseul  and  Mme.  Du  Deffand 
united  their  sentiments  of  prudence  and  propriety  in 
this  matter,  making  no  exception  among  literary  men, 
except  for  their  wise  and  gentle  Anacharsis. 

The  younger  of  the  two  was  full  of  good,  practical 
advice,  and  she  gave  it  without  making  it  unsavoury; 
she  relieved  it  by  a  vivacious  turn  of  expression,  that 
justifies  the  eulogy  of  Horace  Walpole: 

"  Chanteloup,  May  17,  1767.  You  tell  me  of  your  sadness  with 
the  greatest  gaiety,  and  of  your  ennui  in  the  most  amusing  fashion. 
Do  you  also  make  courage  for  yourself,  dear  child  ?     That  is  the  best 


^a&ame  Bu  Deffan^*  259 

thing  to  make  when  we  have  not  any.  Between  making  and  having 
there  is  a  long  way;  yet  it  is  only  by  dint  of  making  that  we  ever 
acquire  any.  Oh!  how  much  1  have  made  in  my  life!  Make 
courage  is  not,  I  know,  a  French  expression;  but  I  must  speak  my 
own  language  before  that  of  my  nation ;  we  often  owe  the  irregularity 
of  our  expressions  to  that  of  our  thoughts — we  have  to  render  them 
such  as  they  are.  .  .  .  From  all  this,  I  gather  that  you  are 
ill  and  full  of  ennui;  this  grieves  me.  You  are  sad  because  you  are 
ill  and  ennuyed,  and  you  are  ill  because  you  are  sad  and  ennuyed. 
Sup  less,  open  your  windows,  drive  out  in  a  carriage,  appreciate  people 
and  things.  So  doing,  you  will  love  less,  but  you  will  hate  less;  you 
will  not  have  great  enjoyments,  neither  will  you  meet  with  great  dis- 
appointments; and  you  will  no  longer  be  sad,  ill,  and  weary  with 
ennui.  Write  to  me  always  in  your  sad  moments;  it  will  be  a  dis- 
traction. Do  not  fear  to  make  me  share  your  ennui;  1  shall  share 
your  feelings  only;  and  mine  will  be  infinitely  tender  for  you." 

I  may  be  mistaken,  but  this  letter  seems  to  me  in  a 
tone  wholly  modern,  more  modern  than  that  of  Mme. 
Du  Deffand.  It  is  essentially  new  and  distinguished. 
Such  a  letter  might  have  been  written  from  1800  to 
1820  by  a  Mme.  de  Beaumont,  or  a  Duchesse  de  Du- 
ras,  by  one  of  those  women  of  heart  and  thought  who 
were  no  longer  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  dismissal  came:  the  Due  de  Choiseul  was  ex- 
iled to  Chanteloup;  we  know  with  what  honour. 
Seeing  such  evidence  of  public  esteem  and  favour, 
the  heart  of  the  duchess  is  filled  with  feelings  of  pride, 
satisfaction,  and  conjugal  delight;  she  overflows,  her 
measure  is  full,  she  is  proud;  she  extols  the  happy 
exile — happy  at  least  for  her, — she  would  not  reduce  it 
in  any  way;  the  exercise  of  power  seems  to  her  less 
enviable,  less  sweet.  And  when  fears  are  expressed 
that  these  popular  manifestations  might  irritate   the 


26o  /lDaC)ame  H)u  BeffanD, 

duke's  enemies,  and  perhaps  provoke  more  severity, 
she  replies: 

"What  more  do  you  expect  them  to  do  to  us?  the  king  never 
strikes  twice.  .  .  .  Terror  has  attacked  our  friends  to  such  a 
point  that  some  of  them  fear  the  public  interest  will  be  embittered 
against  us.  Let  it  be  embittered!  in  the  meantime,  if  further  harm  is 
attempted  against  us,  it  will  be  the  public  interest  that  holds  it  back; 
they  dare  not;  there  would  be  general  revolt.  Let  that  interest  go  on; 
it  is  too  flattering  to  us  to  deprive  us  of  it.  Let  it  be  perpetuated,  if 
possible.  It  secures  the  fame  of  my  husband;  it  rewards  him  for 
twelve  years  of  toil  and  anxiety;  he  has  bought  it  with  his  services; 
it  might  cost  even  a  higher  price  and  yet  we  should  not  feel  that  we 
had  paid  too  highly  for  the  immense  happiness,  and  of  a  new  kind, 
which  we  have  caused  France  to  enjoy.  M.  de  Choiseul  feels  this;  as 
for  me,  I  own  my  head  is  turned  by  it.      .     .     ." 

Thus  we  see  her  heroically  elating  herself  for  her 
lord  and  master;  all  his  interests  are  hers;  she  em- 
braces them  without  reserve,  without  calculation;  she 
exaggerates  his  fame;  she  sees  him  pure  and  spotless; 
if  any  one  holds  back,  if  they  do  not  grant  all,  or  if 
they  seem  to  compromise  with  the  inimical  powers, 
she  is  provoked  to  anger,  she  is  like  a  lion — above 
all,  and  before  all,  she  is  a  woman,  honestly  coquet- 
tish, tender,  assiduous,  showing  herself  in  love,  as  on 
the  first  day,  with  the  man  who,  until  then,  had  cer- 
tainly not  made  too  much  of  her,  and  to  whom,  more 
than  ever,  she  now  consecrates  herself: 

"  Chanteloup,  January,  1771.  .  ,  .  You  wish  me  to  tell  you 
all  I  feel,  all  I  do,  all  I  experience!  I  have  no  longer  those  feelings  of 
suffocation,  the  journey  has  absolutely  cured  them.  I  did  not  take 
cold.  Our  rooms  are  beginning  to  get  warm,  thanks  to  paper  stuffing 
the  chinks  of  all  the  windows,  and  sheepskins  round  all  the  doors. 
Our  chimneys,  too,  begin  to  smoke  rather  less.     .     .     .     We  have 


/IDaDame  2)u  2)etfan&,  261 

pretty  good  food;  we  pass  our  nights  tranquilly,  and  our  mornings 
in  adorning  ourselves  in  pearls  and  diamonds  like  princesses  of  romance. 
I  have  never  had  my  hair  so  well  dressed  or  thought  so  much  of  my 
adornment  as  1  do  now.  1  want  to  be  young  again,  and,  if  possible, 
pretty!  1  shall  try  at  any  rate  to  make  the  grandpapa  think  I  am 
both,  and  as  he  will  have  few  objects  of  comparison,  I  shall  manage  it 
more  easily." 

Mme.  de  Grammont,  nevertheless,  was  there,  and 
shared  habitually  the  same  exile.  But  here,  from  the 
first  day,  yielding  to  a  generous  emotion,  the  rivalry 
was  disarmed,  and  without  altogether  ignoring  its 
cause  they  worked  in  concert  to  soften  the  exile  of 
the  fortunate  mortal  for  whom,  the  very  day  before, 
they  were  at  arms.  The  treaty  of  peace  which  Mme. 
de  Choiseul  signed  with  her  sister-in-law,  at  a  first  in- 
terview, in  presence  of  her^husband,  the  conditions  she 
laid  down,  the  limits  she  clearly  established  around  her 
in  her  own  house,  as  a  devoted  wife  and  the  accom- 
plished mistress  of  a  household,  all  show  the  action 
of  a  very  firm,  very  delicate  person,  perfectly  gentle 
and  without  temper,  but  who  chooses  to  be  reckoned 
with,  a  woman  capable  of  more  than  one  sacrifice  that 
does  not  concern  dignity.  This  agreement,  we  must 
add,  was  very  well  observed  on  both  sides;  tact,  good 
taste,  and  knowledge  of  the  world  prevented  difficult- 
ies in  the  beginning,  and  in  the  long  run  Mme.  de 
Grammont  ended  by  winning  something  not  only  of 
the  esteem  but  even  of  the  affection  of  her  whom  she 
had  so  long  distressed.  If  we  were  still  sensitive  to 
these  subtleties  of  the  old  society,  I  should  say  that 


262  /IDaDame  H)u  BetfanC). 

we   were   witnessing,   veritably,    the  triumph   of  its 
manners. 

We  can  gather  from  these  letters  a  description  in 
fullest  detail,  of  an  ideal  ministerial  exile  in  the  eight- 
eenth century.  Chanteloup,  seen  through  the  eyes  of 
Mme.  de  Choiseul,  or  through  those  of  the  good 
abbe,  was  an  Eden.  But  the  agreeable  incidents  that 
occurred  to  enliven  it  and  to  diversify  the  scene  dis- 
appear for  us  before  grave  reflections.  What  illusion 
in  this  intoxication!  in  this  long  ovation  over  a  fall, 
in  which  fashion  played  at  popularity;  in  this  hope, 
secretly  nourished  and  ever  present,  of  a  future  recall, 
and  a  triumphant  return  to  the  head  of  affairs!  What 
illusion  in  that  fame  which  they  believed  to  be  eternal, 
in  that  building,  costing  forty  thousand  ecus,  erected 
at  the  extremity  of  the  artificial  lake,  a  true  pagoda,  on 
the  marble  walls  of  which  were  carved  the  names  of 
all  who  visited  Chanteloup  during  those  four  years, 
with  this  inscription  made  by  the  Abbe  Barthelemy: 

"  Etienne-Franfois,  Due  de  Choiseul, 

Deeply  touched  by  the  testimonies  of  friendship, 

Kindness  and  attention 

With  which  he  was  honoured  during  his  exile 

By  a  vast  number  of  persons  who  hastened 

To  come  to  him  in  this  place, 

Has  caused  this  building  to  be  erected 

To  eternalise  his  gratitude." 

How  small  that  ministerial  obelisk,  inaugurated  ten 
years  before  the  French  Revolution,  at  a  few  steps  from 
the  volcano  that  was  about  to  engulf  the  monarchy, 


/IDaOame  Du  2)effan&.  263 

how  small,  seen  from  afar,  it  looks,  and  how  it  misses 
its  effect  in  the  perspective! — unless,  indeed,  we  re- 
gard it  simply  as  a  domestic  chapel,  dedicated  by  a 
loving  and  enthusiastic  woman  to  her  worship  of  her 
husband. 

Let  me  add  here  that  Mme.  de  Choiseul,  on  the 
death  of  her  husband  in  1785,  retired  to  the  Convent 
of  the  Recolettes,  to  enable  her  to  pay  the  enormous 
debts  that  he  left  and  thus  do  honour  to  his  memory. 
During  the  last  years  of  her  life  she  lived  in  the  rue 
Saint-Dominique,  in  a  house  afterwards  occupied  by 
Marechal  Soult.  One  day,  during  the  Directorate,  or 
the  Consulate  (for  she  did  not  die  till  1801),  M.  Pas- 
quier,  going  to  see  her,  found  her  much  agitated.  He 
asked  her  the  cause,  fearing  it  was  some  bad  news: 

"  No,  not  that,"  she  answered.  "  But  just  now  they  told  me  that 
a  man  from  Chanteloup  was  there,  and  wished  to  see  me.  1  told  them 
to  bring  him  in.  I  saw  a  tall  man,  neatly  dressed,  who  asked  me  if  I 
recognised  him:  '  Do  you  not  remember,  Madame  la  duchesse,  little 
Pierre  who  picked  up  stones  on  the  road,  and  to  whom  you  were  so 
good  because,  when  you  passed,  you  saw  he  put  his  heart  into  his 
work?  Well,  1  am  little  Pierre.  You  asked  me  one  day  what  I 
needed  to  set  me  up  in  business;  and  you  bought  me  a  donkey  and  a 
cart.  That  brought  me  luck.  1  worked,  1  made  my  way.  1  am 
now  a  contractor  for  roads.  Do  you  know  I  am  one  of  the  first  men 
in  my  region.  I  am  rich.  But,  Madame  la  duchesse,  all  that  belongs 
to  you;  they  tell  me  you  are  not  well  off.  I  have  come  to  return  to 
you  what  is  yours.'  " 

The  emotion  of  Mme.  de  Choiseul  in  relating  the 
little  story  was  too  much  for  her;  tears  choked 
her  voice. 


264  /IDa^ame  2)u  Deftan&. 

The  Abbe  Barthelemy,  as  I  said  before,  gains  by 
the  publication  of  these  letters,  of  which  a  goodly 
number  are  from  him.  It  is  true  that  his  descriptions 
seem  in  these  days  rather  long  and  tiresome,  his 
grand  chronicles  of  Chanteloup  dull  and  long-winded, 
his  jokes  stiff  and  starched :  it  needs  a  magic  of  the 
pen,  which  he  lacks,  to  make  us  find  pleasure  in  the 
monotony  of  those,  to  him,  happy  days.  Let  me  say, 
to  be  just,  that  it  was  not  for  us  that  he  wrote,  but 
for  the  persons  of  his  coterie,  who  found  all  he  said 
very  good,  very  kind,  and  very  amusing.  But,  when 
we  enter  into  the  spirit  of  this  correspondence  with 
the  two  distinguished  women  whose  union  he  ce- 
mented and  sustained,  we  cannot  fail  to  estimate  at 
his  true  value  this  essential  friend,  this  equable  and 
safe  character,  compliant  without  baseness,  agreeable 
and  serviceable  without  flattery.  A  true  sentiment, 
conceived  early,  and  nourished  by  him  for  thirty  years, 
chained  him  to  the  feet  of  his  noble  friend,  Mme.  de 
Choiseul.  I  know  not  whether,  like  Walpole,  he 
began  by  taking  her  for  a  Queen  of  Allegory;  but 
he  was  certainly  patient,  for  he  seems  never  to  have 
wished  that  the  golden  mists  should  part,  or  the 
allegory  vanish. 

One  day,  however,  when  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  with 
the  curiosity  of  a  bored  woman,  questions  him  rather 
closely  as  to  his  private  sentiments,  as  to  how  he 
stands  with  Mme.  de  Grammont,  and  how  he  gov- 
erns himself  between  her  and  Mme.  de  Choiseul,  he 


/IDa^ame  S)u  DeffanO*  265 

goes,  in  his  reply,  rather  beyond  the  meaning  and  bear- 
ing of  her  letter,  and  adds,  after  a  few  explanations: 

"  .  .  .  This  is  all  that  I  can  say  to  you  on  the  subject.  I  am 
greatly  touched  by  the  curiosity  you  express  to  me  about  it;  it  can 
come  only  from  the  interest  you  feel  in  me,  and  that  interest  will  be 
satisfied  with  my  reply;  for,  if  you  put  aside  the  favourable  prepos- 
sessions you  have  for  me,  you  will  see  that  I  am  very  fortunate  in 
being  so  well  treated.  In  the  main,  I  am  not  agreeable;  thus  1  am 
not  fitted  to  live  in  society;  circumstances,  which  1  did  not  seek,  tore 
me  from  my  study,  where  I  had  long  lived,  known  to  a  few  friends, 
infinitely  happy  because  I  had  a  passion  for  work,  and  because  a 
rather  flattering  success  in  my  own  line  promised  me  greater  still. 
Chance  brought  me  to  know  the  grandpapa  and  the  grandmamma; 
the  feelings  that  I  vowed  to  them  led  me  astray  from  my  career.  You 
know  to  what  a  point  I  am  penetrated  with  their  goodness  to  me;  but 
you  do  not  know  that  in  sacrificing  to  them  my  time,  my  obscurity, 
my  peaceful  life,  and,  above  all,  the  reputation  1  might  have  won  in 
my  profession,  I  made  them  the  greatest  sacrifices  of  which  1  was 
capable:  sometimes  they  come  into  my  mind  and  then  1  suffer  cruelly. 
But  as,  on  the  other  hand,  the  cause  is  a  noble  one,  I  put  aside  such 
ideas  as  best  I  can,  and  let  myself  be  carried  along  by  destiny.  I  beg 
you  to  burn  this  letter.  I  have  been  led  to  open  my  heart  to  you  by 
the  marks  of  friendship  and  kindness  with  which  your  letter  is  filled. 
Do  not  attempt  to  comfort  me;  assuredly  1  am  not  to  be  pitied.  1  know 
so  well  the  value  of  what  I  possess  that  I  would  give  my  life  not  to 
lose  it.  In  God's  name,  let  nothing  transpire  of  all  this;  neither  in 
your  letters  nor  in  your  conversations  with  the  grandmamma;  she 
would  be  grieved  if  she  suspected  that  I  still  regretted  some  things. 
Do  not  be  grieved  for  me  yourself;  for  these  regrets  of  mine  are  not  of 
long  continuance,  and  I  feel  daily  that  they  grow  less  keen.  It  is  not 
so  with  the  sentiments  that  attach  me  to  you." 

If  the  Abbe  Barthelemy  received  much  from  his 
noble  friends,  he  brought  them  much  of  his  own  in 
return ;  he  sacrificed  to  them  more  than  he  let  them 
see;  he  was  aware  of  it,  yet  he  kept  it  secret  within 
himself:  all  that  honours  him. 


266  /iDaDame  2)u  H)efEan&» 

Mme.  Du  Deffand,  as  we  feel  in  the  midst  of  our 
impatience,  and  even  of  our  smiles,  at  her  perpetual 
lamentations,  had,  in  general,  one  merit  —  she  was 
true.  She  shows  herself  to  us  as  she  was,  not  seek- 
ing to  embellish  herself;  she  does  herself  justice,  or 
blame,  but  does  not  flatter  herself.  Always  doubt- 
ing and  distrusting  that  she  is  loved,  she  has  the 
desire  to  be.  At  her  advanced  age,  she  still  kept  burn- 
ing, as  in  her  earliest  years,  the  thirst  for  happiness, 
and  she  knows  no  means  of  quenching  it.  When  we 
consider  her  in  her  relations  with  Horace  Walpole 
and  with  the  Choiseuls,  we  see  her  on  her  best  side, 
the  side  to  which  she  clings  in  her  endeavour  to  love. 
There  are  moments  when  she  flatters  herself  that  at 
last  she  is  loved,  and  then  she  cries  out:  "I  enjoy  a 
happiness  I  have  always  desired,  but  have  come  near 
to  thinking  a  pure  chimera:  /  am  loved — by  you  and 
by  my  Horace.  ..."  But  these  moments  are  rare 
and  soon  pass;  they  give  place  to  long  periods  of 
hardness  and  sterility.  At  such  times  she  wants  to 
know  what  others  think  of  her  at  bottom;  whether 
they  love  her  truly,  and  in  what  manner:  "  You  know 
that  you  love  me,"  she  says  to  Mme.  de  Choiseul, 
"but  you  do  not  feel  it." 

She  seems  convinced  of  the  truth  of  that  terrible 
and  cruel  maxim,  which  others  besides  her  have  pro- 
fessed to  believe  and  for  which  Christianity  alone  can 
supply  the  corrective  or  the  remedy,  namely:  "To 
know  a  human  being  truly  to  the  depths  of  his  nature, 


/IDaDame  H)u  H)effanO,  267 

and  to  love  him,  is  an  impossibility."  Nothing  said 
or  done  reassured  her,  nothing  changed  that  belief. 
In  vain  did  Mme.  de  Choiseul  try  to  instil  into  her 
mind  her  own  excellent  precepts  of  practical  wisdom: 
"In  the  matter  of  happiness,  we  ought  not  to  ques- 
tion the  'why'  and  the  'wherefore';  the  best  way 
and  the  safest  is  to  take  it  as  it  comes.  It  is  only 
evil  in  which  we  should  search  for  causes  and  for  the 
means  of  pulling  out  the  thorn  that  wounds  us." 
Nothing  availed.  They  invited  her  to  Chanteloup; 
they  assured  her  of  the  pleasure  she  would  give,  of 
their  happiness  in  having  her;  she  dares  not  believe 
it;  she  lacks  faith  in  friendship  as  in  everything  else. 
The  abbe  preached  to  her,  and  there  is  a  very  pretty 
letter  of  his,  written  from  Chanteloup,  on  the  2nd  of 
February,  1771 ;  it  begins  abruptly  in  these  words; 

"  The  other  day,  one  of  our  Franciscan  Friars  from  Amboise  preached 
on  the  cardinal  virtues,  and  here  is  an  extract  from  his  sermon : 

"  '  Without  faith,  hope,  and  charity  there  is  no  salvation  in  this  world, 
nor  in  the  other.  Let  us  begin  with  the  two  latter,  which  we  know 
best,  because  they  are  nearest  to  us.  Everybody  knows  the  force  of 
hope  and  of  love;  but  what  can  those  virtues  do  without  faith,  with- 
out the  confidence  which  is  their  foundation  ? 

"  '  My  dear  Brethren,  examples  will  convince  you  better  than 
reasons.  If  a  little  girl,  far  from  her  parents,  wrote  to  them:  "  I  hope 
to  go  and  see  you;  that  hope  makes  me  happy,  because  1  love  you  as 
much  as  any  one  can  love;  but  I  fear  1  shall  not  seem  to  you  lovable  "; 
her  patents  would  answer  her:  "  Why  do  you  doubt  that  we  should 
love  you,  inasmuch  as  you  would  not  have  us  doubt  that  you  love 
us  ?  "  Are  you  ignorant  that  charity,  according  to  Saint  Paul,  covers 
a  multitude  of  sins?  Are  you  ignorant  that  Saint  Augustine  said: 
Love,  and  all  shall  be  forgiven  you  ?  Are  you  ignorant  that  persons 
do  really  displease  when  they  are  always  fearing  to  displease  ?     Distrust 


26?  /iDaDame  H)u  H)etfan&. 

poisons  and  destroys  feelings;  it  is  not  a  work  of  nature.  Look  at 
children;  see  with  what  frankness  they  love.  If  they  do  wrong, 
they  are  whipped;  but  at  your  first  caresses  they  will  fling  themselves 
into  your  arms.  Do  you  know  why,  dear  Brethren  ?  Because  they 
trust;  they  do  not  calculate.  Reason  invented  calculation,  hence  sus- 
picions, fears,  false  interpretations.  Instinct  knows  neither  principles, 
nor  consequences,  nor  errors;  it  is  by  instinct  that  we  truly  love  and 
are  loved.  Trust  to  that,  my  very  dear  Brethren;  that  will  guide  you 
better  where  feelings  are  concerned  than  all  the  great  arguments  of 
philosophers,  the  deceitful  experience  of  the  world,  or  the  dangerous 
sophistries  of  your  own  reason  '.      .      .      . 

"  The  good  Friar  said  more,  but  I  came  away,  because  he  began  to 
tire  me,  and  my  instinct  tells  me  not  to  bear  ennui : — but  I  thought  I 
saw  in  his  discourse  a  few  truths  applicable  to  the  granddaughter.'' 

It  was  thus  they  treated  the  sick  old  child,  who  had 
so  abused  and  misused  in  youth  the  faculty  of  loving 
that  she  no  longer  had  the  force  or  the  faith  of  love  in 
her  last  days  :  but  it  was  at  least  something,  better 
than  nothing,  to  have  kept  the  desire  and  its  torture. 
She  said  of  herself,  comparing  that  self  with  Mme. 
de  Sevigne,  and  humbling  herself  in  the  comparison 
(this  time  it  is  to  Horace  Walpole  that  she  writes) : 

"  You  find,  you  say,  my  letters  very  short.  You  do  not  like  me 
to  speak  to  you  of  myself;  I  weary  you  when  I  communicate  my 
thoughts,  my  reflections  ;  you  are  right  ;  they  are  always  very  sad. 
If  I  tell  you  about  this  or  that  person,  what  interest  could  you  take  in 
them  ?  Unfortunately,  I  am  not  like  Mme.  de  Sevigne  in  anything  ;  I 
am  not  moved  by  things  that  are  nothing  to  me.  Everything  inter- 
ested her,  and  warmed  her  imagination  ;  mine  is  iced.  I  am  some- 
times animated,  but  only  for  a  moment  ;  that  moment  gone,  all  that 
brightened  me  is  so  effaced  that  even  the  memory  of  it  is  lost." 

It  is  not  for  us  to  take  pleasure  in  adding  our  com- 
mentary to  hers  and  crushing  her  with  the  presence 
of  Mme.  de  Sevigne  : — Yes,   Mme.   de   Sevigne  had 


/IDaDame  Du  2)etCanC>.  269 

indeed  received  from  a  fairy  at  her  birth  Imagination, 
that  magic  gift,  that  golden  horn  of  plenty  ;  but,  more 
than  that,  she  had  known  how  to  control  her  life  and 
her  feelings. 

Curious  without  interest,  eager  for  the  new  without 
hope  of  better,  tired  of  all  things  without  ceasing  to 
be  agitated,  Mme.  Du  Deffand  wrote  one  day  to 
Mme.  de  Choiseul  :  "What  think  you  of  the  new 
minister  (M.  de  Saint-Germain)?  I  remember  how 
often  I  heard  the  late  Mme.  de  Staal  say  :  '  I  am 
charmed  to  make  new  acquaintances  ;  I  always  hope 
they  will  be  worth  more  than  the  old  ones  ;  I  am  at 
least  certain  they  cannot  be  worse. '  "  To  which  Mme. 
de  Choiseul  replied,  as  if  poison  had  been  presented 
to  her  :  "Your  quotation  from  Mme.  de  Staal  is  a 
horror  to  me.  I  am  far  from  thinking  as  she  did  ; 
it  seems  to  me  that  I  am  not  dissatisfied  with  any  of 
my  acquaintances,  and  I  am  enchanted  with  my 
friends." 

Those  words  issued  from  a  healthy  soul.  Mme.  de 
Choiseul  has  indeed  the  honours  of  this  correspond- 
ence. Her  name  should  be  added  to  the  list  of 
women  who  have  thought  well  and  written  well. 
She  is  one  conquest  the  more  won  by  literature  from 
the  old  French  society. 

1  have  lately  studied  very  closely  the  relation  be- 
tween Mme.  Du  Deffand  and  Horace  Walpole,  and  I 
think  that,  in  general,  justice  has  not  been  done  to 
either  of  them.     In  Walpole  people  have  seen  only 


270  /IDa^ame  Du  2)etfan&, 

the  fear  he  felt  of  incurring  the  ridicule  of  a  most 
satirical  society  through  this  proclaimed  passion  of  a 
blind  old  woman  ;  and  as  for  Mme.  Du  Defifand,  we 
judge  her  too  much  as  did  Grimm,  Marmontel,  the 
whole  Encyclopaedic  clique,  through  whom  the  tradi- 
tion about  her  has  come  down  to  us.  We  judge  her 
too  much  as  if  we  were  on  the  side  of  her  enemy, 
Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  or  on  that  of  Mme.  Geoffrin.  The 
true,  deep,  and  serious  judgment  on  Mme.  Du  Deffand, 
in  this  matter,  ought  to  be  formed  from  the  "  Letters 
of  Horace  Walpole";  for  Walpole,  in  spite  of  his 
harshness,  more  apparent  than  real,  appreciated  his 
old  friend  at  her  true  value,  and  admired  her  ex- 
tremely. He  returned  many  times  to  Paris  expressly 
to  see  her.  In  a  letter  addressed  to  the  poet  Gray, 
written  in  January,  1766,  three  months  after  the  one  I 
have  previously  quoted,  he  says,  in  describing  de- 
lightfully the  two  rival  figures  of  Mme.  Geoffrin  and 
Mme.  Du  Deffand  : 

"  Her  great  enemy,  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  was  for  a  time  the  mistress 
of  the  Regent  ;  she  is  now  very  old  and  blind  ;  but  she  retains  all  her 
vivacity,  wit,  memory,  judgment,  and  charm.  She  goes  to  the  Opera, 
to  the  theatre,  to  suppers,  and  to  Versailles  ;  she  gives  two  suppers 
a-week,  has  all  the  new  books  read  to  her,  writes  songs  and  epigrams 
that  are  truly  admirable,  and  remembers  all  that  has  been  done  in  that 
line  for  eighty  years.  She  corresponds  with  Voltaire,  dictates  de- 
lightful letters  to  him,  contradicts  him,  is  not  bigoted  for  him,  nor  for 
any  one,  and  laughs  at  Clergy  and  philosophers  alike.  In  discussion, 
to  which  she  inclines  readily,  she  is  full  of  warmth,  yet  she  is  very 
seldom  in  the  wrong.  Her  judgment  on  every  subject  is  as  correct 
as  possible  ;  but  on  all  points  of  conduct  she  is  as  much  mistaken  as 
any  one  can  be  ;  for  she  is  all  love  and  all  aversion,  ardent  to  enthusi- 


/IDa&ame  2)u  H)ettan&»  271 

asm  for  her  friends,  always  anxious  that  they  should  love  her  and  con- 
cern themselves  with  her ;  a  violent  enemy,  but  frank." 

In  this  first  portrait,  to  which  Walpole  added,  later, 
many  a  touch  of  his  brush,  we  can  see  a  Mme.  Du 
Deffand  far  more  living  and  animated  than  she  has 
usually  been  painted. 

Walpole  quitted  Paris  April  17,  1766,  after  a  stay  of 
seven  months,  and  Mme.  Deffand  wrote  to  him  on  the 
19th.  She  had  received  a  letter  from  him  the  evening 
before,  written  especially  to  urge  her  to  secrecy  and 
prudence.  Why  such  prudence  ?  it  may  be  asked. 
Because  there  was  then  a  secret  chamber  where  letters 
were  unsealed,  and  a  too  tender,  too  ardent  letter  from 
an  old  woman  of  seventy  might  go  to  the  king,  to 
the  Court,  amuse  the  courtiers,  and  make  this  rather 
singular  intercourse  the  topic  of  satirical  couplets, 
such  as  Mme.  Du  Deffand  herself  knew  so  well  how  to 
write.  Walpole  would  not  willingly  subject  himself 
to  that.  Mme.  Du  Deffand  was  better  inured  to  it. 
"  You  say  that  people  are  laughing  at  us,"  she  writes, 
"  but  here  they  laugh  at  everything,  and  do  not  think 
of  it  the  next  instant."  This  fear  on  the  part  of  Wal- 
pole returns  perpetually;  he  restrains  his  old  friend  as 
much  as  he  can;  he  rallies  her  for  being  "  romantic," 
"  sentimental "  ;  he  piques  her  by  taxing  her  with 
metaphysics,  which  she  abhors  above  everything. 
She  replies  with  anger,  with  submission,  with  senti- 
ment. She  persists  in  returning  constantly  to  the 
topic  he  forbids,  to  that  constant  thought  which   is 


272  /iDaDame  2)u  DeffanD. 

for  him  alone.  If  he  is  ill,  if  he  does  not  write  often 
enough,  she  threatens  him,  gaily,  with  the  most  vio- 
lent measures: 

"  Take  notice,"  she  says,  "  that  it  is  not  letters  that  I  exact;  simply 
bulletins;  if  you  refuse  me  this  kindness,  1  shall  instantly  say  to  Viart 
(her  secretary):  '  Start!  take  your  boots,  and  go,  at  one  flight,  to  Lon- 
don; proclaim  in  all  the  streets  that  you  come  from  me,  that  you  have 
orders  to  live  near  Horace  Walpole,  who  is  my  guardian,  that  I  am  his 
ward,  that  I  have  for  him  an  unbridled  passion,  and  that  I  shall,  per- 
haps, arrive  myself  directly,  and  settle  at  Strawberry  Hill;  in  short, 
there  is  no  scandal  I  am  not  willing  to  cause, 

"  Ah!  my  guardian,  quick!  get  a  bottle  of  salts;  are  you  fainting? 
This,  however,  is  what  will  happen  if  I  do  not  hear  from  you  twice  a 
week." 

Here,  of  course,  she  is  jesting,  but  at  other  times  she 
is  sad,  bitter,  and  casts  a  despairing  glance  on  life: 

*'  Ah,  mon  Dieu  !  you  are  right  enough!  what  an  abominable,  de- 
testable thing  is  friendship!  where  did  it  come  from  ?  to  what  does  it 
lead  ?  on  what  is  it  founded  ?  what  good  can  we  expect  or  hope  to 
get  from  it  ?  What  you  have  said  to  me  is  true;  then  why  are  we  on 
this  earth  ?  above  all,  why  should  we  live  to  grow  old  ?  .  .  . 
Last  evening  1  wondered  much  at  a  numerous  company  who  came  to 
see  me;  men  and  women  seemed  to  me  machines  with  springs  that 
made  them  go  and  come,  talk  and  laugh,  without  thinking,  without 
reflecting,  without  feeling;  each  played  his  or  her  role  from  habit: 
Mme.  la  Duchesse  d'Aiguillon  laughed  convulsively;  Mme.  de  Forcal- 
quier  disdained  everybody;  Mme.  de  La  Valliere  jabbered  about  every- 
thing. The  men  played  no  better  parts;  and  I,  myself,  was  sunk  in  the 
blackest  reflections;  I  thought  how  1  had  spent  my  life  in  illusions; 
how  1  had  dug  for  myself  all  the  abysses  into  which  I  had  fallen ;  how 
all  my  judgments  had  been  false  and  rash,  and  always  too  hasty;  how, 
in  short,  I  had  never  truly  known  any  one;  that  I  had  never,  more- 
over, been  known  by  any  one,  and  that,  possibly,  I  did  not  know  my- 
self. We  desire  a  support,  we  let  ourselves  be  charmed  by  the  hope 
that  we  have  found  one;  it  is  a  dream;  a  dream  which  circumstances 
soon  dispel,  and  on  which  they  have  the  effect  of  an  awakening." 


ADaDame  2>u  Beffan^,  273 

We  have  the  two  tones.  The  last  tone,  that  is  to 
say,  the  serious  and  penetrating  one,  the  one  that  goes 
to  the  bottom  of  everything,  is  not  rare  in  the  letters 
of  Mme.  Du  Deffand  to  Walpole.  He,  good  English- 
man that  he  is,  in  spite  of  his  flashes  of  French  wit, 
makes  her  read  Shakespeare;  which  she  instantly  en- 
joys, crying  out,  as  if  on  the  discovery  of  a  new 
world:  "Oh!  I  admire  your  Shakespeare.  I  read 
'  Othello  '  yesterday,  and  I  have  just  read  '  Henry  VI.' 
I  cannot  express  to  you  the  effect  those  plays  have  had 
upon  me;  they  have  resuscitated  me."  She,  too,  in 
her  way,  sees  into  the  depths  like  Shakespeare;  in  her 
64th  Letter  1  find  what  I  call  her  Hamlet  monologue. 
I  invite  the  inquirer  to  read  the  passage  that  begins 
with  these  words:  "Tell  me  why,  detesting  life,  I 
fear  death."  .  .  .  and  ends  thus:  "I  own  that  a 
dream  would  be  better."  An  English  critic,  at  the 
time  when  these  Letters  were  published  in  London, 
remarked,  very  justly,  that  Mme.  Du  Deffand  seemed 
to  combine  in  the  character  of  her  mind  something  of 
the  qualities  of  the  two  nations:  the  charm  and  liveli- 
ness of  the  one,  with  the  boldness  and  vigorous  judg- 
ment of  the  other. 

What  she  liked  first  of  all  in  Walpole  was  his  free- 
dom of  thought  and  of  judgment.  She  loved  truth 
above  all  else,  and  that  people  should  be  truly  them- 
selves. The  taste  of  her  time  disgusted  her:  "What 
people  call  eloquence  to-day  has  become  to  me  so  odi- 
ous that  1  would  prefer  the  language  of  the  markets; 

VOL.  I. — 18. 


274  /IDat)ame  Du  DeffanO, 

by  dint  of  searching  for  wit  they  smother  it."  Her 
literary  judgments,  which  must  have  seemed  excess- 
ively severe  at  the  time,  are  nearly  all  confirmed 
to-day.  "That  Saint-Lambert,"  she  said,  "has  a 
cold,  tasteless,  false  mind;  he  thinks  he  abounds  in 
ideas,  but  he  is  sterility  itself"  What  she  said  of 
Saint-Lambert,  she  says,  with  variations,  of  many 
others.  How  she  selects  in  Voltaire!  how  she  dis- 
tinguishes in  him  the  good  from  the  second-rate;  that 
which  came  from  the  living  spring  from  mere  idle 
repetitions  [rabdchage].  She  does  the  same  with  Jean- 
Jacques:  "Not  knowing  what  to  read,  I  have  gone 
back  to  Rousseau's  Heloise  ;  there  are  very  good  parts 
in  it,  but  they  are  drowned  in  an  ocean  of  eloquent 
verbiage."  On  Racine,  on  Corneille,  she  passes  sound 
and  correct  judgments.  There  is  only  one  work  that 
she  would  like  to  have  written;  one  only,  because  it 
seems  to  her  to  have  attained,  in  all  respects,  to  per- 
fection ;  and  that  is  Athalie.  It  was  said  of  Mme.  Du 
Deffand  that  in  the  matter  of  reading  "she  denied  her- 
self nothing  but  the  necessary."  The  saying  is  witty 
but  shallow.  Undoubtedly,  she  did  not  have  a  solid 
foundation  of  regular,  systematic  reading.  As  she  was 
not  told  in  advance  what  she  ought  to  admire,  she  had 
only  her  own  clear  opinion,  her  honest  and  luminous 
instinct,  and  they  usually  guided  her  aright. 

"  You  English,"  she  writes  to  Walpole,  "  you  subject  yourselves  to 
no  rule,  no  method;  you  let  genius  grow,  without  constraining  it  to 
take  this  or  that  form ;  you  would  have  all  the  intellect  you  have,  if 
no  one  had  had  any  before  you.     Oh!  we  are  not  like  that;  we  have 


/IDa&ame  S>u  Dettan^,  275 

books;  some  on  the  art  of  thinking;  others  on  the  art  of  speaking, 
writing,  comparing,  judging,  etc." 

But  if  here  she  seems  to  flatter  Walpole  and  to 
espouse  the  taste  of  his  nation,  she  does  not  always 
compliment  him,  and  she  knows  at  need  how  to  op- 
pose him.  She  stands  firm  for  Montaigne,  whom 
Walpole  did  not  like;  she  is  amazed  at  that,  and  gives 
him  her  reasons  in  many  places: 

"  I  am  very  sure  that  you  could  accustom  yourself  to  Montaigne; 
one  finds  in  him  al!  that  one  has  ever  thought;  and  no  style  is  more 
energetic.  He  teaches  nothing,  because  he  decides  nothing;  it  is  the 
very  opposite  of  dogmatism.  He  is  vain— Hey !  all  men  are,  are  they 
not?  and  those  who  seem  modest,  are  not  they  doubly  vain  ?  The  / 
and  the  me  are  on  every  line;  but  how  should  we  ever  have  any 
knowledge  except  through  the  /  and  the  me  ?  No,  no,  my  tutor,  he 
is  the  only  good  philosopher  and  the  only  good  metaphysician  there 
ever  has  been." 

In  another  charming  passage,  in  comparing  Mon- 
taigne with  Walpole  at  his  manor  of  Strawberry  Hill, 
she  exclaims:  "No,  no,  Horace  resembles  Michel 
more  than  he  thinks  he  does!"  What  she  likes  es- 
pecially in  Montaigne  is  that  he  had  a  friend  and  be- 
lieved in  friendship.  Thus  this  woman,  sceptical  as 
to  everything,  came,  in  extreme  old  age,  to  believe  in 
something;  and  for  that  much  must  be  forgiven  her. 

Mme.  de  Sevigne  was  then  extremely  in  vogue  in 
society ;  people  were  reading  her  Letters,  then  recently 
published;  and  the  unpublished  ones  relating  to  Fou- 
quet's  trial  were  lent  about.  Horace  Walpole  doted 
on  her  and  called  her  "  Our  Lady  of  Livry."  Oh!  how 
many  times  did  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  to  please  him,  envy 


276  /iDaDame  2)u  2)etfan&, 

the  style  of  "that  saint  of  Livry."  "But beware  of 
imitating  her,"  writes  Walpole;  "  your  style  is  yours, 
as  hers  is  hers."  Mme.  de  Sevigne,  be  it  said,  is  ad- 
mirably judged  by  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  and  so  is  her 
cousin,  Bussy  Rabutin.  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  also,  is 
clearly  apprehended :  "  I  persist  in  thinking  that  that 
woman  was  not  false ;  but  she  was  cold,  austere,  un- 
feeling, without  passion.  .  .  ."  This  whole  por- 
trait of  Mme.  de  Maintenon  should  be  read;  it  remains 
the  best  likeness  of  all  that  have  been  made  of  her. 
One  might  be  tempted  to  apply  a  part  of  it  in  its  con- 
clusions to  Mme.  Du  Deffand  herself  if  she  had  not,  in 
loving  Walpole  with  this  unlooked-for  rejuvenescence, 
given  the  lie  to  her  former  reputation  for  insensibility. 
Walpole  was  a  collector,  an  amateur,  antiquary, 
bibliophile,  having  all  sorts  of  tastes,  and  perhaps  a 
few  manias.  Mme.  Du  Deffand  envied  him  because 
he  never  felt  ^7^^^^/  in  solitude;  but,  with  her  severe 
taste,  she  could  not  comprehend  how  any  one  could 
like,  pell-mell,  so  many  things;  read,  for  instance, 
Shakespeare  and  Voltaire's  Guerre  de  Geneve,  admire 
Mme,  de  Sevigne  and  find  pleasure  in  the  novels  of 
Crebillon  fils.  She  tells  him  so.  In  the  matter  of 
memoirs  and  of  history  she  congratulates  herself  that 
their  tastes  are  alike.  I  must  be  allowed  to  quote  one 
more  passage,  because  Mme.  Du  Deffand  has  been 
accused  of  not  liking  Plutarch,  and  I  am  certain  that, 
if  she  did  not  like  him,  she  must  have  thought  she 
discovered  in  him  something  too  much  of  a  rhetorician: 


/iDaOame  H)u  DetfanD,  277 

"  I  like  real  lives  also,"  she  writes;  "  I  can  read  only  facts  written  by 
those  to  whom  they  happened,  or  by  those  who  have  witnessed  them; 
and  furthermore,  1  want  them  related  without  phrases,  without  addi- 
tions, without  reflections;  i  wish  the  author  not  to  be  so  concerned  to 
say  things  well;  1  want  the  tone  of  conversation,  vivacity,  warmth, 
and  above  all,  facility,  simplicity.  Where  is  that  to  be  found  ?  In  a 
few  books  we  know  by  heart,  and  which,  assuredly,  are  not  imitated 
in  the  present  day." 

This  indicates  the  side  that  I  call  classic,  in  the 
highest  meaning  of  the  word,  in  Mme.  Du  Deffand; 
that  by  which  she  is  above  and  outside  of  her  epoch. 
I  shall  not  dwell  here  on  the  portraits  which  she  drew 
of  the  personages  of  her  social  world.  She  excelled 
in  such  portraits;  fixing  into  them,  ineffaceably,  ab- 
surdities and  follies  in  a  picturesque  manner.  In  the 
different  ways  of  human  beings,  she  saw  only  varie- 
ties of  the  universal  folly.  From  the  depths  of  her 
armchair,  blind  as  she  was,  she  saw  all;  she  uses  con- 
tinually the  word  "see  " ;  she  forgets  she  has  no  eyes, 
and  others  forget  it  as  they  listen  to  her.  She  judged 
even  the  acting  of  actors  and  actresses;  and  it  was 
she  who  stamped  with  a  single  sentence  the  charac- 
teristic of  Mile.  Rancourt,  visible  on  her  first  appear- 
ance: 'She  is  a  demoniac  without  heat." 

I  have  said  that  Horace  Walpole  came  from  England 
several  times  to  see  her.  It  is  curious  to  gather  the 
impressions  of  that  clever  and  clear-sighted  friend:  he 
raises  himself  in  our  estimation  and  makes  us  absolve 
him  for  his  occasional  harshness  and  coldness  to- 
ward her,  by  the  manner  in  which  he  speaks  of  her 
to  others.     He  does  not  shrink  from  calling  her  his 


2  78  /IDa^ame  2)u  H>etfan&. 

"dear  old  friend."  At  each  journey  he  thinks  she 
grows  younger  —  a  miracle  in  which  he  certainly 
counts  for  much: 

"At  seventy-three  years  of  age,"  he  writes  (September  7,  1769), 
"  she  has  the  same  fire  as  at  twenty -three.  She  makes  couplets  and 
songs,  and  remembers  all  those  that  have  been  made.  Having  lived 
from  the  most  agreeable  to  the  most  reasoning  epoch,  she  unites  what 
is  best  in  the  two  periods,  without  their  defects  :  all  that  the  first  had 
that  was  charming  without  its  conceit,  all  that  the  second  has  that  is 
reasonable  without  its  arrogance.  I  have  heard  her  discuss  with  all 
sorts  of  people  all  sorts  of  subjects,  and  1  have  never  found  her  mis- 
taken. She  can  put  down  the  learned,  lift  up  disciples,  and  find  the 
right  word  for  all.  As  lively  in  her  impressions  as  Mme.  de  Sevigne" 
— what  praise  from  the  lips  of  Walpole  ! — "  she  has  none  of  her  pre- 
judices, but  a  more  universal  taste.  With  the  frailest  of  bodies,  her 
vital  energy  carries  her  along  in  a  rush  of  life  that  would  kill  me,  if  I 
had  to  stay  here.  If  we  return  at  one  in  the  morning  from  a  supper 
in  the  country,  she  proposes  to  me  a  drive  around  the  boulevards,  or 
a  visit  to  the  fair,  because,  she  says,  '  it  is  too  early  to  go  to  bed.'  I 
had  great  difficulty,  last  night,  in  persuading  her,  though  she  was 
quite  ill,  not  to  stand  about  till  two  or  three  o'clock  to  watch  for  the 
comet ;  she  had,  with  that  intention,  ordered  an  astronomer  to  bring 
his  telescope  to  President  Henault's  apartment,  under  the  idea  that  it 
would  amuse  me." 

Poor  President  Renault,  as  we  see,  was  not  dead : 
but,  for  some  years,  he  was  little  better,  and  was  now 
a  mere  wreck.  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  on  the  contrary, 
to  the  end  of  her  life  in  1780,  in  her  84th  year,  re- 
mained the  same,  lively,  indefatigable,  of  "herculean 
feebleness,"  as  Walpole  said.  She  could  not  sleep; 
and  felt,  more  than  ever,  the  need  of  spending  her 
nights  in  society:  "Whether  it  injures  my  health  or 
not,"  she  said,  "or  whether  it  suits  the  regime  of  the 
people  with  whom  I  like  to  live,  I  shall  not  go  to  bed 


/IDaOame  S)u  DeffanO.  279 

a  minute  before  I  must."  Like  old  Wenceslas,  slie 
would  not  sleep  till  the  last  moment:  "What  I  take 
from  my  nights  1  add  to  my  days." 

In  one  of  the  journeys  he  made  to  Paris  (August, 
1775),  Walpole,  before  his  boots  are  off,  sees  Mme. 
Du  Deffand  arriving  at  his  hotel.  She  is  present  at 
his  toilet,  in  which,  as  she  remarks,  there  is  no  im- 
propriety, because  she  cannot  see.  Walpole  goes  to 
sup  with  her,  does  not  leave  her  till  half-past  two 
that  night,  and  before  his  eyes  are  open  in  the  morn- 
ing receives  a  letter  from  her:  "In  fact,"  he  says, 
"her  soul  is  immortal  and  forces  her  body  to  keep  it 
company." 

There  are  two  traditions  about  Mme.  Du  Deffand: 
the  purely  French  tradition,  which  has  come  down  to 
us  through  those  she  judged  so  severely,  through  the 
men  of  Letters  and  the  Encyclopaedists;  and  the  di- 
rect, truer,  more  private  tradition,  for  which  we  must 
go  to  Walpole  as  its  source.  In  the  latter  we  find, 
with  surprise,  an  ardent  woman,  impassioned,  capa- 
ble of  devotion,  and  even  kind.  "  Ah  !  mon  Dieu  !  ' ' 
she  cries,  "  what  a  great  and  estimable  virtue  is  kind- 
ness! Every  day  I  make  a  resolution  to  be  kind;  I 
know  not  if  I  make  any  progress."  Place  that  say- 
ing, for  contrast,  beside  those  terrible  words  she  said 
after  the  manner  of  La  Rochefoucauld:  "There  is  not 
a  single  person  to  whom  we  could  confide  our  troubles 
without  giving  him  a  malignant  joy,  or  without 
debasing  ourselves  in  his   eyes."     Well,  those   two 


28o  /lDat)ame  H)u  2)ettant), 

traditions,  the  one  that  makes  her  unfeeling,  and  the 
one  that  shows  her  impassioned,  must  be  combined 
to  give  a  complete  idea  of  her. 

But  the  real  key  to  this  heart  is  in  her  feeling  for 
Walpole.  She  regrets  in  one  place  that  Walpole  was 
not  her  son,  which  was  quite  possible  as  regards  their 
ages.  In  fact,  we  can  see  in  this  sudden  passion  of  a 
sterile  old  age  a  sort  of  maternal  tenderness  which  had 
never  found  rest,  and  which  was  suddenly  aroused, 
without  being  aware  of  its  true  name.  To  define  the 
secret  instinct  and  offend  no  one,  let  us  call  it  a  ten- 
derness of  adoption.  She  loved  Walpole  as  the  ten- 
derest  of  mothers  would  have  loved  a  son  long  lost 
and  suddenly  restored  to  her.  Many  of  these  singular 
and  erratic  passions,  in  which  sensibility  misleads  it- 
self, are  often  only  a  revenge  of  nature,  punishing  us 
for  not  doing  simple  things  in  their  right  season. 

I  shall  say  nothing  of  Madame  Du  Deffand's  letters 
from  the  historical  point  of  view,  and  the  curious 
light  they  cast  on  the  last  years  of  Louis  XV  and  the 
first  years  of  Louis  XVI.  Nor  shall  I  speak  of  the 
tone  of  her  society,  which  continued  quite  faithfully, 
after  her,  in  the  circle  of  the  Beauvaus,  and  even  into 
the  salon  of  the  Princesse  de  Poix  under  the  Empire. 
I  shall  only  refer  to  the  last  letter,  so  self-restrained, 
and  so  touching,  which  she  dictated  for  Walpole. 
Her  faithful  secretary,  Viart,  could  not  read  it  aloud  to 
his  mistress  after  writing  it,  without  bursting  into 
tears;  then  it  was  that  she  said  to  him,  in  her  naive 


/IDa^ame  Bu  Detfan^,  281 

astonishment,  these  infinitely  sad  words:  "  So  you  do 
love  me?"  The  sore  of  her  whole  life  is  there  — 
unbelief  and  desire. 

She  had  requested  that  her  little  dog,  Tonton,  be 
sent  to  Horace  Walpole,  that  he  might  take  care  of  it. 
The  faithful  Viart,  in  the  letter  in  which  he  gives 
Walpole  the  details  of  her  illness  and  death,  adds,  in 
closing:  "I  will  keep  Tonton  until  M.  Thomas  Wal- 
pole goes  to  England;  I  take  the  greatest  care  of  him. 
He  is  very  gentle;  he  bites  no  one;  he  was  cross  only 
near  his  mistress."  In  a  letter  from  Walpole,  dated 
May  4,  1 78 1,  I  find  these  words:  "The  little  dog  of 
my  poor,  dear  Mme.  Du  Deffand  has  come.  She 
made  me  promise  to  take  care  of  him  the  last  time  I 
saw  her;  this  I  shall  do  religiously;  I  will  make  the 
poor  animal  as  happy  as  possible."  I,  myself,  would 
not  do  like  Buffon,  and  forget  the  dog  of  the  blind. 


%ovb  Cheaterfielb. 


283 


Xor&  CbesterfielD* 

AT  all  epochs  there  have  been  treatises  intended 
to  form  the  "Man  of  Honour,"  the  "Well- 
bred  Man,"  the  "Courtier,"  where  there  were 
Courts,  and  the  "Perfect  Knight."  In  these  various 
treatises  on  good-breeding  and  polite  manners,  if  we 
open  them  in  successive  ages,  we  shall  discover,  at 
first  sight,  parts  that  are  as  much  out  of  date  as  the 
fashions  and  the  coats  of  our  fathers.  Evidently  pat- 
terns have  changed.  But  looking  a  little  closer,  we 
shall  find,  if  the  treatise  has  been  written  by  a  man  of 
sense  who  knows  mankind,  that  there  is  still  much  by 
which  to  profit  in  the  study  of  those  models  that  have 
been  set  up  before  the  eyes  of  preceding  generations. 
The  Letters  that  Lord  Chesterfield  addressed  to  his 
son,  which  are  a  whole  school  of  good-breeding  and 
knowledge  of  the  world,  have  the  particularly  inter- 
esting merit  that  their  writer  never  thought  of  setting 
up  a  model;  he  merely  wished  to  train  an  excellent 
pupil  in  his  private  life.  These  were  confidential 
letters  which  were  suddenly  brought  to  light,  reveal- 
ing all  the  secrets  and  betraying  the  ingenious  artifices 
of  paternal  solicitude.     If,  in  reading  them  to-day,  we 

285 


286  %ovt>  (Ibestertiel^ 

are  struck  by  the  excessive  importance  given  to  inci- 
dental and  passing  particulars,  to  details  of  dress,  for 
instance,  we  are  no  less  struck  by  the  lasting  side,  that 
which  belongs  to  the  sum  of  human  observation  in  all 
ages;  and  this  last  part  is  much  more  considerable 
than  we  might  think  from  a  first  superficial  glance. 
In  seeking  to  train  his  son  to  all  that  became  an 
honourable  man  in  social  life,  Lord  Chesterfield  did 
not  write  a  treatise  "On  Duties"  like  Cicero;  he  left 
letters  which,  by  their  mixture  of  right  judgment 
and  levity,  by  certain  frivolous  airs  insensibly  mingled 
with  serious  graces,  hold,  fairly  well,  a  middle  place 
between  the  "Memoirs  of  the  Chevalier  de  Gram- 
mont"and  Telemaque. 

Before  enlarging  upon  the  Letters  we  need  to  know 
a  little  about  Lord  Chesterfield,  one  of  the  most  bril- 
liant minds  in  England  in  his  day,  and  also  one  of 
those  most  closely  allied  with  France.  Philip  Dormer 
Stanhope,  Earl  of  Chesterfield,  was  born  in  London, 
September  22,  1694,  the  same  year  that  Voltaire  was 
born.  Sprung  from  an  illustrious  race,  he  knew  the 
value  of  his  birth  and  desired  to  sustain  its  honour;  but 
he  found  it  difficult  not  to  laugh  at  genealogical  pre- 
tensions carried  to  extremes.  To  guard  himself  from 
them  once  for  all,  he  placed  among  the  portraits  of  his 
ancestors  two  old  figures  of  a  man  and  a  woman;  on 
the  frame  of  one  was  written  Adam  Stanhope,  on  that  of 
the  other.  Eve  Stanhope.  Thus,  while  holding  firmly 
to  his  real  honours,  he  cut  short  all  chimerical  fancies. 


LORD  CHESTERFIELD. 
From  an  old  painting. 


XorD  Cbesterfiel^.  287 

His  father  took  no  interest  in  his  education,  and  he 
was  given  over  to  the  care  of  his  grandmother,  Lady 
Halifax.  He  was  early  conscious  of  a  desire  to  excel 
and  be  first  in  everything;  a  desire  he  would  have 
liked,  later,  to  excite  in  the  breast  of  his  son,  and 
which,  for  good  and  for  evil,  is  the  principle  of  all 
great  things.  As  he  himself,  in  his  first  youth,  had  no 
guidance,  he  made  mistakes  more  than  once  in  the 
objects  of  his  emulation,  and  conceived  a  false  notion 
of  honour.  He  confesses  that  at  one  period  of  his 
inexperience  he  fell  into  excess  in  wine  and  into  other 
excesses  to  which  he  was  not  naturally  inclined,  but  his 
vanity  was  gratified  in  being  called  a  man  of  pleasure. 
So  with  gambling,  which  he  then  considered  a  neces- 
sary ingredient  in  the  composition  of  a  young  man  of 
fashion.  He  therefore  plunged  into  it  without  any 
passion  at  first,  but  soon  could  not  withdraw  from  its 
fascination;  and  compromised  his  fortune  in  that  way 
for  years.  "  Take  warning  by  my  example,"  he  says 
to  his  son,  "choose  your  pleasures  yourself,  and  let 
none  of  them  master  you." 

This  desire  to  excel  and  to  distinguish  himself  did 
not  always  mislead  him;  he  often  applied  it  wisely; 
his  first  studies  were  admirable.  Placed  at  Cambridge 
University,  he  took  all  the  courses  that  were  taught 
there;  he  studied  civil  law,  philosophy,  and  mathe- 
matics under  the  learned  and  blind  Saunderson.  He 
read  Greek  fluently,  and  gave  account  in  French  of  his 
progress  to  his  old  teacher,  a  French  refugee  pastor. 


288  %ovtf  Cbesterfiel^. 

M,  Jouneau.  Lord  Chesterfield  had  learned  the  French 
language  in  childhood  from  a  Norman  nurse  who  took 
care  of  him.  When  he  came  to  Paris  for  the  last  time, 
in  1 74 1,  M.  de  Fontenelle,  having  remarked  in  his  pro- 
nunciation something  of  the  Norman  accent,  asked 
him  if  he  had  not  originally  learned  the  language  from 
a  person  of  that  province ;  which  was  in  fact  the  case. 
After  two  years  at  the  university,  he  made  the  tour 
of  the  continent,  according  to  a  custom  of  the  young 
noblemen  of  his  country.  He  visited  Holland,  Italy, 
and  France.  Writing  from  Paris,  December  7,  17 14, 
to  this  same  M.  Jouneau,  he  says  : 

"  I  will  not  tell  you  my  sentiments  about  Frenchmen,  because  I 
am  often  taken  for  one  of  them,  and  more  than  one  Frenchman  has 
paid  me  the  greatest  compliment  they  think  they  can  make  to  any 
one,  which  is  :  '  Monsieur,  you  are  exactly  like  us.'  I  will  only  tell 
you  that  1  am  insolent,  I  talk  much,  very  loud,  and  in  the  tone  of  a 
master  ;  that  I  sing  and  dance  as  1  walk  along  ;  and  finally  that  I  am 
furiously  extravagant  in  powder,  feathers,  and  white  gloves,  etc." 

He  will  do  justice,  later,  to  our  serious  qualities,  but 
here  we  see  the  mocking  spirit,  satirical  and  slightly 
insolent,  which  makes  its  point  at  our  expense. 

In  his  Letters  to  his  son,  he  pictures  himself,  on 
the  occasion  of  his  first  entrance  into  polite  society,  as 
still  covered  with  the  rust  of  Cambridge,  shame- 
faced, silent,  and  finally  taking  his  courage  in  both 
hands  to  say  to  a  lady  :  "  Do  you  not  think  it  is  very 
hot  to-day,  madam.?"  Lord  Chesterfield  tells  that 
to  his  son  not  to  discourage  him,  but  to  show  him 
from  what  beginnings  he  himself  had  advanced.     He 


%ov^  CbesterfielC).  289 

does  the  honours  of  his  own  person  to  embolden 
the  lad,  and  the  better  to  draw  him  closer  to  himself. 
1  do  not  allow  myself  to  take  him  at  his  word  in 
this  anecdote.  If  he  were  ever  for  one  moment 
embarrassed  in  society,  that  moment  must  have  been 
short  indeed  ! 

Queen  Anne  had  just  died ;  Chesterfield  rejoiced  in 
the  succession  of  the  House  of  Hanover,  of  which  he 
was  to  be  one  of  the  declared  champions.  He  had  a 
seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  made  his  first  ap- 
pearance there  on  a  good  footing.  Yet  it  is  said  that 
an  apparently  frivolous  circumstance  held  him  in 
check  and  paralysed,  in  some  degree,  his  eloquence. 
One  of  the  members  of  the  House,  who  was  not  dis- 
tinguished for  any  other  superior  talent,  had  that  of 
imitating  to  perfection  the  speakers  to  whom  he  re- 
plied. Chesterfield  feared  ridicule  (a  foible  of  his), 
and  he  was  silent  upon  certain  occasions  oftener  than 
he  wished  to  be,  lest  he  should  afford  opportunity  for 
the  mimicry  of  his  colleague.  He  soon  after  inherited 
the  peerage  on  the  death  of  his  father  and  passed  into 
the  House  of  Lords,  the  surroundings  of  which  may 
have  been  better  suited  to  the  grace,  refinement,  and 
urbanity  of  his  eloquence.  But  he  never  compared 
the  two  scenes  as  regarded  the  importance  of  their  de- 
bates, or  the  political  influence  to  be  acquired  in  them  : 

"It  is  unheard  of,"  he  said  later  of  Pitt,  at  the  moment  when  that 
great  orator  consented  to  enter  the  Upper  House  under  the  title  of 
Earl  of  Chatham  :  "  it  is  unheard  of  that  a  man  in  the  plenitude  of 

VOL.  I. — 19. 


290  %ovt>  Cbe5terfiel&, 

his  power,  at  the  very  moment  when  his  ambition  had  just  obtained 
the  most  complete  triumph,  should  quit  the  House  which  had  pro- 
cured him  that  power,  and  which  alone  could  secure  it  to  him,  to  re- 
tire into  that  hospital  for  incurables,  the  House  of  Lords  " 

It  is  not  for  me  to  estimate  here  the  political  career 
of  Lord  Chesterfield.  If  I  dared  to  hazard  a  judgment 
upon  It  as  a  whole,  1  should  say  that  his  ambition 
was  never  wholly  satisfied,  and  that  the  brilliant  dis- 
tinction with  which  his  public  life  was  filled  covered, 
in  the  depths  below,  many  disappointed  aspirations 
and  wasted  hopes.  Twice,  in  the  two  decisive  cir- 
cumstances of  his  political  life,  he  was  stranded. 
Young,  and  in  the  first  fire  of  his  ambition,  he  early 
staked  his  whole  career  on  the  side  of  the  presumptive 
heir  to  the  crown,  who  became  George  II.  He  was 
of  those  who,  on  the  accession  of  that  prince  in  1727, 
had  a  right  to  count  upon  favour  and  a  place  in 
power.  But,  able  as  he  was,  m  seeking  to  turn  to  the 
side  of  the  rising  sun  he  did  not  do  so  with  perfect 
judgment.  He  had  long  courted  the  mistress  of  the 
prince,  believing  in  her  coming  influence,  but  he 
,  neglected  the  legitimate  wife,  the  future  queen,  who 
proved  in  the  end  to  have  the  only  real  power. 
Queen  Caroline  never  forgave  him.  This  was  the 
first  check  to  the  political  fortunes  of  Lord  Chester- 
field, who  was  then  thirty-three  years  old  and  in  the 
full  tide  of  his  hopes.  He  was  too  hasty  and  he  chose 
the  wrong  path.  Robert  Walpole,  less  active  and 
apparently  less  clever,  took  his  measures  more  care- 
fully, and  calculated  better. 


Xor^  Cbesterfielt).  291 

Thus  thrown  with  some  scandal  into  the  Opposition, 
and  especially  after  1731,  when  he  was  forced  to  resign 
his  offices  at  Court,  Lord  Chesterfield  worked  with  all 
his  strength  for  ten  years  to  overthrow  the  Walpole 
ministry,  which  did  not  fall  till  1742.  Even  then,  he 
did  not  attain  to  power;  he  was  still  left  outside  of 
the  new  combinations.  When,  two  years  later,  in 
1744,  he  entered  the  administration,  first  as  ambassador 
to  The  Hague,  then  as  Viceroy  to  Ireland,  next  as  Sec- 
retary of  State  and  member  of  the  Cabinet  (i  746-1 748) 
his  actual  power  was  more  specious  than  real.  In  a 
word,  Lord  Chesterfield,  at  all  times  an  eminent  public 
man  in  his  country,  whether  as  one  of  the  leaders  of 
the  Opposition,  or  as  an  able  diplomatist,  was  never  a 
directing  minister,  nor  even  a  very  influential  minister. 

In  public  affairs,  he  certainly  had  the  distant  coup 
d'oeil,  and  that  outlook  upon  the  future  which  comes 
from  breadth  of  mind;  but  he  possessed  these  qualities 
far  more  than  he  did  the  persevering  patience  and  the 
practical  firmness  in  daily  work  which  are  so  neces- 
sary to  men  in  government.  It  would  be  true  to  say 
of  him,  as  of  La  Rochefoucauld,  that  public  life  served 
to  make  an  accomplished  moralist  of  an  incomplete 
man  of  action. 

In  1744,  at  the  age  of  only  fifty,  his  political  ambi- 
tion seemed  to  be  partly  worn  out;  his  health  was 
enough  affected  to  make  him  think  with  satisfaction 
of  retirement.  Besides  which,  he  had  a  secret  ideal 
and  a  real  ambition,  the  object  of  which  is  now  known 


292  Xor&  CbestecfielJ). 

to  us.  He  had  had,  before  his  marriage  and  about  the 
year  1732,  a  son  by  a  French  lady  (Mme.  du  Bouchet), 
whom  he  had  met  in  Holland.  To  that  son  he  at- 
tached himself  with  extreme  tenderness;  he  wrote  to 
him  in  all  sincerity:  "From  the  first  day  of  your 
life,  the  dearest  object  of  my  own  has  been  to  render 
you  as  perfect  as  the  weakness  of  human  nature  will 
allow."  To  the  education  of  this  son  all  his  aspira- 
tions, all  his  predilections  and  worldly  hopes  had 
turned;  whether  Viceroy  in  Ireland,  or  Secretary  of 
State  in  London,  he  found  time  to  write  him  long, 
detailed  letters,  directing  his  every  action,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  perfecting  him  in  the  serious  and  polite  arts 
of  life. 

The  Chesterfield  whom  we  prefer  to  study  is,  there- 
fore, the  man  of  intellect  and  experience,  who  has 
passed  through  public  office  and  tried  all  roles  of  polit- 
ical life  only  to  know  their  every  mechanism  and  to 
give  us  the  last  word  upon  them;  the  man  who,  in  his 
youth,  was  the  friend  of  Pope  and  of  Bolingbroke,  the 
introducer  into  England  of  Montesquieu  and  Voltaire, 
the  correspondent  of  Fontenelle  and  Mme.  de  Tencin; 
he  whom  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  elected  to  its 
membership,  who  united  the  mental  qualities  of  the 
two  nations,  and  who,  in  a  witty  Essay,  but  more  par- 
ticularly in  his  Letters  to  his  son,  shows  himself  to  us 
as  a  moralist,  as  agreeable  as  he  is  finished,  and  as  one 
of  the  masters  of  life.  It  is  the  La  Rochefoucauld  of 
England  whom  we  are  now  studying. 


Xor^  Cbesterfielt).  293 

Montesquieu,  after  the  publication  of  the  Esprit  des 
Lois,  wrote  to  the  Abbe  de  Guasco,  who  was  then  in 
England:  "Tell  Lord  Chesterfield  that  nothing  has 
gratified  me  so  much  as  his  approbation ;  and  that  as  he 
is  reading  me  for  the  third  time,  he  will  be  well  able 
to  tell  me  what  to  improve  and  to  rectify  in  my  work; 
nothing  could  be  more  instructive  than  his  observa- 
tions and  his  criticism."  It  was  Chesterfield  who, 
speaking  one  day  to  Montesquieu  of  the  proneness  of 
Frenchmen  to  revolution  and  of  their  impatience  with 
slow  reforms,  summed  up  our  whole  history  in  the 
pithy  sentence:  "  You  Frenchmen  know  how  to  make 
barricades,  but  you  will  never  know  how  to  raise 
barriers!" 

Lord  Chesterfield  certainly  enjoyed  Voltaire;  he  said, 
apropos  of  the  Siecle  de  Louis  XI K'  "Lord  Boling- 
broke  taught  me  how  we  ought  to  read  history,  Vol- 
taire teaches  me  how  it  ought  to  be  written."  But  at 
the  same  time,  with  that  practical  sense  that  never  de- 
serts men  of  intellect  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel, 
he  perceived  Voltaire's  imprudences,  and  disapproved 
of  them.  When  old,  and  wholly  retired  from  society, 
he  wrote  to  a  French  lady : 

"  Your  good  authors  are  my  principal  resource;  Voltaire,  above  all, 
charms  me,  except  for  his  impiety,  with  which  he  cannot  keep  him- 
self from  larding  all  he  writes.  He  would  do  better  to  suppress  it 
wisely-  for  after  all  is  said,  no  one  ought  to  disturb  the  established 
order.  Let  every  man  think  as  he  will,  or  rather,  as  he  can,  but  not 
communicate  his  ideas  when  they  are  of  a  nature  to  trouble  the  peace 
of  society." 


294  Xor&  CbesterfielD. 

What  he  said  then,  in  1768,  Chesterfield  had  already 
said  twenty-five  years  earlier  in  writing  to  Crebillon 
fits — singular  correspondent,  and  singular  confidant 
in  the  matter  of  morals !  He  was  speaking  of  Voltaire, 
with  reference  to  his  tragedy  of  Mahomet  and  the 
daring  things  he  had  put  into  it: 

"  What  I  cannot  pardon,  for  it  is  unpardonable,  is  the  trouble  he 
gives  himself  to  propagate  a  doctrine  as  pernicious  to  civil  society  as 
it  is  contrary  to  the  common  religion  of  all  countries.  I  doubt  very 
much  whether  it  is  permissible  for  a  man  to  write  against  the  worship 
and  belief  of  his  nation,  even  though  he  be  sincerely  convinced  that  it 
is  full  of  errors,  on  account  of  the  confusion  and  disorder  he  will  surely 
cause;  but  1  am  very  certain  that  it  is  not  at  all  permissible  to  attack 
the  foundations  of  morality  and  break  the  bonds,  already  too  weak, 
that  hold  men  to  their  duty. 

In  writing  thus  Chesterfield  was  not  mistaken  as  to 
Voltaire's  great  inconsistency.  That  inconsistency,  in 
two  words,  was  this:  Voltaire,  who  considered  all 
men  as  fools  or  as  children,  who  had  not  laughter 
enough  with  which  to  ridicule  them,  nevertheless 
placed  loaded  weapons  in  their  hands  without  troub- 
ling himself  as  to  the  use  they  might  make  of  them. 

Lord  Chesterfield  himself,  in  the  eyes  of  the  puritans 
of  his  country,  has  been  accused,  as  I  ought  to  state,  of 
making  a  breach  of  morality  by  the  Letters  he  addressed 
to  his  son.  The  severe  Johnson,  who  in  other  respects 
was  not  impartial  in  regard  to  Chesterfield  and  thought 
he  had  grounds  of  complaint  against  him,  said,  when 
the  Letters  were  first  published,  that  they  "taught 
the  morals  of  a  wanton  and  the  manners  of  a  dancing- 


Xor&  CbesterfielD.  295 

master."  That  judgment  is  superlatively  unjust;  if 
Chesterfield,  in  some  particular  case,  insists  on  graces 
of  manner,  and  on  being  agreeable  at  any  price,  it  is 
because  he  has  already  dwelt  on  the  solid  parts  of  edu- 
cation, so  that  his  pupil  is  not  so  much  in  danger  of 
sinning  on  the  side  that  renders  a  man  "respectable" 
as  on  that  which  renders  him  agreeable.  Though  more 
than  one  passage  in  these  Letters  may  seem  very 
strange  coming  from  a  father  to  a  son,  taken  as  a  whole 
they  are  inspired  by  a  true  spirit  of  tenderness  and 
wisdom.  If  Horace  had  had  a  son,  I  fancy  he  would 
not  have  written  to  him  otherwise. 

The  Letters  begin  with  the  abc  of  education  and  in- 
struction. Chesterfield  teaches,  and  sums  up  in  French 
for  his  son,  the  first  elements  of  mythology  and  history. 
I  do  not  regret  that  these  first  letters  have  been  pub- 
lished: excellent  advice  is  slipped  into  them.  The 
little  Stanhope  was  only  eight  years  old,  when  his 
father  drew  up  for  him  a  manual  of  rhetoric  suited  to 
his  understanding,  by  which  he  tried  to  instil  into  him 
good  language,  and  distinction  in  the  manner  of  ex- 
pressing himself.  He  especially  recommends  to  him 
attention  in  all  he  does,  and  he  gives  full  value  to  that 
word.  It  is  attention  only,  he  tells  him,  that  impresses 
objects  on  the  memory :  "  There  is  not  in  all  the  world 
a  surer  sign  of  a  small  and  paltry  mind  than  inatten- 
tion. All  that  is  worth  the  trouble  of  doing,  deserves 
and  requires  to  be  well  done,  and  nothing  can  be  well 
done   without  attention."     This  precept  he  repeats 


296  Xor&  CbesterfielD. 

incessantly,  and  he  varies  its  application  as  his  pupil 
grows  older  and  is  more  in  a  condition  to  understand 
it  to  its  full  extent.  In  pleasure  or  in  study,  he  wishes 
that  each  thing  done  should  be  done  well,  done  fully, 
and  at  its  right  time,  without  hindrance  or  distraction. 
"  When  you  read  Horace,"  he  says,  "  pay  attention  to 
the  accuracy  of  his  thought,  to  the  elegance  of  his  dic- 
tion, to  the  beauty  of  his  poesy,  and  do  not  be  think- 
ing of  the  De  Homine  et  Cive  of  Puffendorf ;  and  when 
you  read  Puffendorf  do  not  think  of  Mme.  de  Saint- 
Germain."  But  such  free  and  firm  disposal  of  thought 
by  the  action  of  the  will  is  in  the  power  of  very  great 
or  very  good  minds  only. 

M.  Royer-Collard  was  wont  to  say  that  "  what  spe- 
cially marked  our  age  was  respect  in  the  moral  order, 
and  attention  in  the  intellectual  order."  Lord  Chester- 
field, with  his  less  serious  air,  would  have  been  capa- 
ble of  that  saying.  He  was  not  long  in  realising  what 
was  lacking  in  the  son  he  was  trying  to  form,  and 
who  was,  indeed,  the  occupation  and  object  of  his  life: 

"  In  scrutinising  your  personality  to  its  depths,"  he  writes,  "  I  have 
not,  thank  God,  discovered  as  yet  any  viciousness  of  heart,  any  weak- 
ness of  the  brain;  but  I  have  discovered  laziness,  inattention,  and 
indifference;  defects  which  are  only  pardonable  in  aged  persons 
who,  in  the  decline  of  life  when  health  and  vigour  lessen,  have  a  kind 
of  right  to  that  sort  of  tranquillity.  But  a  young  man  should  be 
ambitious  to  shine  and  to  excel." 

Now,  it  is  precisely  this  sacred  fire,  this  spark  that 
makes  the  heroes,  the  Alexanders,  the  Caesars, — to  be 
first  in  all  that  they  undertake, — it  was  this  motto  of 


Xort)  Cbesterfiel^.  297 

great  hearts  and  of  eminent  minds  of  all  classes  that 
nature  had  neglected  to  put  into  the  worthy  but  thor- 
oughly commonplace  soul  of  young  Stanhope.  "You 
seem  to  lack,"  his  father  says  to  him,  "that  vivida 
vis  animi  which  stirs,  which  instigates  most  young 
men  to  please,  to  shine,  to  outdo  others," — "When  I 
was  your  age,"  he  says  again,  "I  should  have  been 
ashamed  that  another  could  learn  his  lesson  better  than 
I,  or  could  beat  me  at  any  game;  and  1  should  have 
had  no  peace  till  1  recovered  the  advantage." 

The  whole  of  this  little  Course  of  Education  by 
letters  has  a  sort  of  continued  dramatic  interest.  We 
follow  the  effort  of  a  keen,  distinguished,  energetic 
nature,  such  as  that  of  Lord  Chesterfield,  in  its  strug- 
gle with  an  honest  but  indolent  nature,  a  soft,  lethargic 
dough,  of  which  the  father  desires  to  make,  at  any 
cost,  an  accomplished  masterpiece,  agreeable,  original; 
succeeding,  finally,  in  making  nothing  better  than  an 
estimable  copy.  What  sustains  this  struggle, — in 
which  so  much  art  is  expended  and  the  eternal  coun- 
sel recurs,  always  the  same  at  the  bottom,  under 
all  its  metamorphoses,  —  what  sincerely  touches  the 
reader,  is  the  true,  paternal  affection  which  inspires 
the  delicate  and  excellent  master,  patient  this  once, 
however  eager,  prodigal  of  resources  and  skill,  never 
discouraged,  inexhaustibly  sowing  on  that  barren  soil 
the  elegances  and  graces  of  life.  Not  that  this  son, 
the  object  of  so  much  culture  and  zeal,  was  unworthy 
of  his  father  in  any  way.     It  has  been  said  that  no 


298.  OLorD  CbesterfielD, 

one  was  ever  more  stupid,  more  sulky  than  he;  and 
a  harsh  saying  of  Dr.  Johnson  is  quoted  in  proof  of  it. 
But  such  opinions  are  caricatures  that  go  beyond  the 
truth.  It  appears,  from  more  accurate  testimony,  that 
Mr.  Stanhope,  without  being  a  model  of  grace,  had, 
in  reality,  the  air  of  a  well-bred,  polished,  agreeable 
man.  But  do  we  not  feel  that  the  discouraging 
point  is  just  there  ?  It  might,  perhaps,  have  been 
better  to  fail  totally  than  to  have  made,  with  so  much 
care  and  trouble,  an  insignificant  and  ordinary  man  of 
society,  one  of  those  of  whom  it  is  said,  for  all  judg- 
ment, that  there  is  nothing  to  say.  There  was  surely 
enough  to  discourage  and  make  the  work  seem  pitiful 
to  any  but  a  father. 

Lord  Chesterfield  thought,  at  first,  of  France,  as  the 
best  place  to  refine  his  son  and  give  him  the  pliancy 
and  ease  that  he  never  afterwards  acquired.  In  his 
private  letters  to  a  lady  in  Paris,  Mme.  de  Monconseil, 
we  see  that  he  thought  of  sending  him  there  in  early 
youth : 

"  I  have  a  boy,"  he  writes  to  this  friend,  "who  is  now  thirteen 
years  old.  I  will  confess  to  you  that  he  is  not  legitimate,  but  his 
mother  is  a  person  well  born,  who  showed  me  kindnesses  that  I  did  not 
deserve.  As  for  the  boy,  perhaps  it  is  prepossession,  but  i  think  him 
lovable;  he  has  a  pretty  face,  much  vivacity  and,  1  believe,  intelli- 
gence for  his  age.  He  speaks  French  perfectly,  he  knows  much  of 
Latin  and  Greek,  and  he  has  history,  ancient  and  modern,  at  his  fin- 
gers' ends.  He  is  at  present  in  school;  but  as  no  one  dreams  here  of 
training  the  manners  and  morals  of  young  men,  who  are  nearly  all 
boobys,  awkward  and  impolite,  in  short,  such  as  you  see  them  when 
they  come  to  Paris  at  twenty  or  twenty-one  years  of  age,  I  do  not 
wish  my  boy  to  stay  here  long  enough  to  get  those  bad  tendencies. 


Xor&  CbestertielJ).  299 

That  is  why  I  intend,  as  soon  as  he  is  fourteen,  to  send  him  to  Paris. 
.  .  .  As  I  love  this  child  extremely,  and  pique  myself  that  I  can 
make  something  good  of  him,  because  1  think  the  stuff  is  there,  my 
idea  is  to  unite  in  his  person  what  1  have,  so  far,  never  found  in  any 
one  individual,  namely:  what  there  is  of  good  in  the  two  nations." 

He  enters  into  the  details  of  his  plan  and  the  means 
he  expects  to  employ:  an  English  teacher  for  the 
mornings,  a  French  tutor  for  the  afternoons,  aided, 
above  all,  by  the  gay  world  and  good  society.  The 
war  that  broke  out  between  France  and  England  post- 
poned this  project  of  a  Parisian  education,  and  the 
young  man  did  not  make  his  first  appearance  in  French 
society  until  1751,  when  nineteen  years  of  age  and 
after  completing  the  grand  tour  of  Switzerland,  Ger- 
many, and  Italy.  All  had  been  arranged  by  the  most 
attentive  of  fathers  for  his  success  and  his  welcome 
on  this  new  stage.  The  youth  is  lodged  at  the  Acad- 
emie,  with  M.  de  la  Gueriniere;  in  the  mornings  he  is 
to  do  his  exercises;  the  afternoons  he  must  devote  to 
society:  "Pleasure  is  now  to  be  the  last  branch  of 
your  education,"  writes  the  indulgent  father;  "it  will 
soften  and  polish  your  manners;  it  will  induce  you  to 
seek  and  then  to  acquire  the  graces."  On  this  latter 
point  Chesterfield  is  exacting  and  gives  no  quarter. 
The  graces  ;  it  is  to  them  that  he  returns  perpetually, 
for  without  them  all  efforts  are  vain:  "If  they  do 
not  come  to  you,  seize  them!"  he  cries.  As  if  to 
know  how  to  seize  them  were  not  already  having 
them! 

Three   ladies,    friends   of  his   father,    are  specially 


300  %ov^  CbestcrfielO, 

charged  to  watch  over  and  guide  the  young  man  at 
his  start;  they  are  his  governesses  for  society:  Mme. 
de  Monconseil,  Lady  Hervey,  and  Mme.  Du  Bocage. 
But  these  introducers  seemed  essential  for  his  start 
only;  after  that,  the  young  man  must  go  of  himself, 
and  choose  some  more  charming  and  intimate  guide. 
On  the  delicate  subject  of  women,  Lord  Chesterfield 
breaks  the  ice:  "I  shall  not  speak  to  you  on  this  topic 
as  a  theologian,  a  moralist,  or  a  father  "  ;  he  says,  "  I 
put  aside  my  age  to  consider  yours  only.  I  wish  to 
speak  to  you  as  one  man  of  pleasure  would  do  to  an- 
other if  he  has  good  taste  and  intelligence."  And  he 
explains  his  meaning;  stimulating  the  young  man  as 
much  as  he  can  towards  "honourable  arrangements" 
and  refined  pleasures  in  order  to  turn  him  from  easy 
and  coarse  habits.  He  has  for  principle  that  "an 
honourable  arrangement  becomes  a  man."  All  his 
morality,  in  this  respect,  may  be  summed  up  in  Vol- 
taire's line:  "Nought  is  evil  in  good  company."  It 
is  at  such  points  that  Johnson's  grave  modesty  veils 
itself;  ours  only  smiles. 

The  serious  and  the  frivolous  mingle  incessantly  in 
these  letters.  Marcel,  the  dancing -master,  is  much 
recommended;  Montesquieu  no  less.  The  Abbe  de 
Guasco,  a  sort  of  hanger-on  to  Montesquieu,  is  a  use- 
ful personage  as  an  introducer  here  and  there: 

"Between  ourselves,"  writes  Chesterfield,  "he  has  more  know- 
ledge than  talent;  but  a  clever  man  knows  how  to  get  some  good 
out  of  every  one,   and  every  man  is  good  for  something.     As  for 


Xor^  (Ibesterfiel&.  301 

President  Montesquieu,  he  is,  in  every  respect,  a  precious  acquaint- 
ance. He  iias  genius,  with  the  most  extensive  reading  in  the  world. 
Draw  from  that  source  as  much  as  you  can." 

Among  authors,  those  that  Chesterfield  recom- 
mends, especially  at  this  epoch,  are  La  Rochefou- 
cauld and  La  Bruyere:  "If  you  read  in  the  morning 
a  few  of  La  Rochefoucauld's  maxims,  consider  them, 
examine  them  well;  compare  them  with  the  originals 
you  will  meet  in  the  evening.  Read  La  Bruyere  in 
the  morning,  and  judge  at  night  if  his  portraits  are 
good  likenesses."  But  these  excellent  guides  are  not 
themselves  to  have  other  utility  than  that  of  a  geo- 
graphical map.  Without  personal  observation  and 
experience  they  would  be  useless,  and  even  lead  to 
error,  as  a  map  would  do  if  we  relied  upon  its 
complete  knowledge  of  towns  and  provinces.  Better 
read  one  man  than  ten  books:  "The  world  is  a 
country  that  no  one  has  ever  known  through  descrip- 
tions; each  of  us  must  travel  over  it  in  person  to  get 
initiated." 

Here  follow  a  few  precepts  and  comments  that  are 
worthy  of  a  master  of  human  morals: 

"The  most  essential  knowledge  of  all,  I  mean  knowledge  of  the 
world,  is  never  acquired  without  great  attention;  1  know  a  goodly 
number  of  aged  persons  who,  after  living  much  in  society,  are  still 
mere  children  in  knowledge  of  the  world. 

"  Human  nature  is  the  same  the  world  over;  but  its  workings  are 
so  varied  by  education  and  by  habit,  that  we  ought  to  see  it  under  all 
its  customs  before  we  can  say  that  we  know  it  intimately. 

"  Nearly  all  men  are  born  with  all  the  passions  to  a  certain  degree; 
but  there  is  scarcely  any  man  who  does  not  have  a  ruling  passion,  to 


302  Xort)  (Ibesterfiel&. 

which  the  others  are  subordinate.  Discover  in  each  individual  that 
ruling  passion,  pry  into  the  folds  of  his  heart;  and  observe  the  diverse 
effects  of  the  same  passion  in  different  natures.  And  when  you  have 
found  the  ruling  passion  of  a  man,  remember  never  to  trust  him  wher- 
ever that  passion  has  an  interest.  .      ." 

"  If  you  wish  to  win  the  good  graces  and  affection  of  certain  per- 
sons, men  or  women,  try  to  discover  their  most  salient  merit,  if  they 
have  one,  and  their  ruling  weakness,  for  every  one  has  that  ;  then,  do 
justice  to  the  one,  and  a  little  more  than  justice  to  the  other. 

"  Women,  in  general,  have  but  one  object — their  beauty  ;  in 
regard  to  it  there  can  hardly  be  flattery  too  gross  for  them  to 
swallow. 

"The  flattery  that  will  most  truly  touch  women  who  are  really 
beautiful,  as  well  as  those  who  are  decidedly  ugly,  is  that  which  ap- 
plies to  their  minds.     .     .     ." 

As  regards  women,  though  he  seems  at  times  very 
contemptuous,  he  makes  reparation  to  them  at  other 
times;  and,  above  all,  whatever  he  may  think  himself, 
he  never  allows  his  son  to  say  much  evil  of  them : 

"  You  seem  to  think  that  from  Eve  to  the  present  day  they  have 
done  much  harm  ;  as  for  the  aforesaid  lady,  I  give  her  up  to  you ;  but 
since  her  day,  history  will  show  you  that  men  have  done  far  more 
evil  in  the  world  than  women;  but,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  I  advise  you 
to  trust  to  neither  more  than  is  absolutely  necessary.  What  1  also 
advise  you  is  never  to  attack  whole  bodies  of  persons,  whatever  they 
may  be.  Individuals  pardon  sometimes  ;  but  bodies  and  societies 
never  pardon." 

In  general,  Chesterfield  recommends  to  his  son  cir- 
cumspection and  a  sort  of  prudent  neutrality,  even  as 
regards  both  the  rascals  and  the  fools  who  swarm  in 
the  world:  "Excepting  their  friendship,  there  is  no- 
thing more  dangerous  than  their  enmity."  This  is 
not  the  morality  of  Cato  and  Zeno;  it  is  that  of  Al- 
cibiades,  Aristippus,  and  Atticus. 


Xort)  CbestertieIC>^  303 

On  religion  he  says,  in  reply  to  certain  cutting  re- 
marks made  by  liis  son:  "The  reason  of  every  man 
is,  and  ought  to  be,  his  guide;  I  should  have  as  much 
right  to  exact  that  all  men  should  be  of  my  height 
and  my  temperament,  as  to  insist  that  they  should 
reason  precisely  as  I  do." 

In  all  things  it  is  his  opinion  that  we  ought  to 
know  and  love  the  good  and  the  best,  but  not  to 
make  ourselves  the  champions  thereof  against  all  and 
every  one.  We  ought  to  know,  even  in  literature, 
how  to  tolerate  the  weakness  of  others:  "Let  them 
tranquilly  enjoy  their  errors  of  taste  as  well  as  of  re- 
ligion." Oh!  how  far  we  are  from  such  wisdom  in 
our  bitter  trade  of  criticism  as  we  now  make  it! 

He  does  not,  however,  counsel  falsehood:  he  is 
explicit  on  that  point.  His  precept  is:  Never  say  all, 
but  never  lie.  "I  have  always  observed,"  he  repeats 
frequently,  "that  the  greatest  fools  are  the  greatest 
liars.  For  myself,  I  judge  of  a  man's  veracity  by  the 
strength  of  his  mind." 

The  serious,  as  we  see,  blends  readily  in  Chester- 
field with  the  agreeable.  He  is  constantly  demanding 
of  the  mind  both  firmness  and  flexibility,  gentleness 
in  manner  with  energy  beneath  it.  Lord  Chesterfield 
truly  felt  the  seriousness  of  France  and  of  all  which  the 
eighteenth  century  brought  with  it  that  was  fruitful 
and  redoubtable.  According  to  him:  "  Duclos,  in  his 
Reflexions,  is  right  in  saying  that  a  germ  of  reason 
is  beginning  to  develop  in  France;  and  I  confidently 


304  XorO  CbesterfielO. 

predict,"  adds  Chesterfield,  "that  before  the  end  of 
this  century,  the  business  of  king  and  priest  will  be 
more  than  half  gone."  The  French  Revolution  was 
thus  predicted  by  him  in  1750. 

He  cautioned  his  son  from  the  outset  against  the 
idea  that  the  French  are  purely  frivolous:  "The  cold 
inhabitants  of  the  North  consider  the  French  a  frivol- 
ous people,  who  whistle  and  sing  and  dance  all  the 
time:  this  idea  is  a  long  way  from  the  truth,  though 
many  dandies  may  seem  to  justify  it.  But  those  very 
dandies,  matured  by  age  and  by  experience,  are  often 
metamorphosed  into  very  capable  men."  The  ideal, 
according  to  him,  would  be  to  unite  the  good  qualities 
of  both  nations;  but  he  seems  in  this  mixture  to  in- 
cline more  to  the  side  of  France:  "I  have  said  several 
times,  and  I  really  think  it,  that  a  Frenchman  who 
adds  to  a  foundation  of  virtue,  erudition,  and  good 
sense  the  manners  and  politeness  of  his  country  at- 
tains to  the  perfection  of  human  nature." 

He  united  fairly  well  in  himself  the  merits  of  the 
two  nations,  with  an  additional  trait  that  belongs  to 
his  race.  He  had  imagination  in  his  intellect.  Ham- 
ilton had  this  distinctive  quality,  and  carried  it  into 
his  French  intellect.  Bacon,  the  great  moralist,  is  al- 
most a  poet  in  expression.  The  same  cannot  be  said 
of  Lord  Chesterfield,  and  yet  he  had  more  imagination 
in  his  wit  and  in  his  intellect  than  we  find  in  Saint- 
Evremond  and  in  our  brilliant  moralists  in  general.  In 
this  respect  he  is  like  his  friend  Montesquieu. 


Xor&  Cbe5terfiel&,  305 

Although,  in  these  Letters  to  his  son,  we  are  obliged, 
without  being  rigorous,  to  note  certain  points  of  a 
somewhat  corrupt  morality,  we  must  also  point  out, 
by  way  of  compensation,  the  very  serious  and  alto- 
gether admirable  passages  in  which  he  speaks  of 
Cardinal  de  Retz,  of  Mazarin,  of  Bolingbroke,  of  Marl- 
borough, and  of  many  others.  It  is  a  rich  book.  We 
cannot  read  a  page  without  retaining  in  our  minds 
some  valuable  observation. 

Lord  Chesterfield  destined  this  son,  so  dear  to  him, 
to  diplomacy;  at  first  he  found  some  difficulty  in  car- 
rying out  his  plans  because  of  the  young  man's  illegit- 
imacy. To  put  an  end  to  such  objections,  he  made 
him  enter  Parliament,  as  the  surest  means  of  over- 
coming the  scruples  of  the  Court.  Mr.  Stanhope,  in 
his  maiden  speech,  had  a  moment's  hesitation,  and 
was  forced  to  have  recourse  to  his  notes.  He  never 
again  renewed  the  attempt  to  speak  in  public.  It 
seems  that  he  succeeded  better  in  diplomacy;  but  al- 
ways in  secondary  roles  that  required  only  solid 
worth.  He  filled  the  post  of  envoy  extraordinary  to 
the  Court  of  Dresden.  But  his  health,  at  all  times 
delicate,  gave  way  in  youth,  and  his  father  had  the 
grief  of  seeing  him  die  before  him  at  the  early  age  of 
thirty-six  (1768). 

At  this  period.  Lord  Chesterfield  was  living  a  se- 
questered life  on  account  of  his  infirmities,  of  which 
the  most  distressing  to  him  was  total  deafness.  Mon- 
tesquieu, when  his   sight   was   failing,  had  formerly 

VOL.  I.— 20. 


3o6  XorD  CbestertiielO. 

said  to  him:  "  I  know  how  to  be  blind."  But  Ches- 
terfield admitted  that  he  could  not  say  as  much,  for  he 
knew  not  how  to  be  deaf.  He  wrote  oftener  to  his 
friends,  even  to  those  in  France:  "Intercourse  by 
letters,"  he  wrote,  "is  the  conversation  of  the  deaf 
and  their  sole  link  to  society."  He  found  his  greatest 
consolation  in  his  pretty  country-house  at  Blackheath, 
to  which  he  had  given,  in  French  fashion,  the  name 
of  Babiole  [the  Bauble].  There  he  busied  himself  in 
gardening  and  in  cultivating  pineapples  and  melons; 
he  said  he  "vegetated  in  company  with  them  ": 

"  I  have  vegetated  this  whole  year,"  he  wrote  to  a  lady  in  Paris 
(1763),  •■  without  pleasures  and  without  troubles:  my  age  and  my 
deafness  forbid  the  first ;  my  philosophy,  or  perhaps  my  temperament 
(they  are  often  mistaken  for  each  other),  guarantees  me  from  the  latter. 
I  always  derive  the  best  I  can  from  the  tranquil  amusements  of  gar- 
dening, walks,  and  reading  ;  meantime,  I  await  death  without  desiring 
it  or  dreading  it." 

He  undertook  no  long  works,  for  which  he  felt 
himself  too  weary,  but  he  sometimes  sent  agreeable 
Essays  to  a  periodical  called  "The  World,"  These 
Essays  confirm  his  reputation  for  refinement  and 
urbanity.  But  nothing  approaches  the  work  which, 
to  him,  was  no  work  at  all  ;  namely :  these  Letters, 
which  he  never  expected  that  any  one  would  read, 
but  which  are  to-day  the  fund  of  his  literary  wealth. 

His  old  age,  beginning  rather  precociously,  dragged 
slowly  along.  His  wit  played  in  a  hundred  ways  on 
that  sad  theme;  speaking  of  himself  and  one  of  his 
friends,  Lord  Tyrawley,  who  was  equally  old  and  in- 


Xor&  Cbe5terfiel^.  307 

firm:  "  Tyrawley  and  I,"  he  said,  " have  been  dead 
these  two  years,  but  we  don't  wish  it  Icnown."  Vol- 
taire, who  while  claiming  to  be  always  at  death's 
door,  still  remained  young,  wrote  to  him  (October  21, 
1771)  this  pretty  letter,  signed  "The  Old  Sick  Man  of 
Ferney  ": 

".  .  .  Enjoy  your  honourable  and  fortunate  old  age,  after 
passing  through  the  trials  of  life.  Enjoy  your  mind,  and  preserve  the 
health  of  your  body.  Of  the  five  senses  that  we  all  share,  you  have 
but  one  that  has  weakened  ;  Lord  Huntingdon  assures  me  that  you 
have  a  good  stomach,  which  is  worth  more  than  a  pair  of  ears.  Per- 
haps it  might  be  for  me  to  decide  which  is  the  saddest,  to  be  deaf,  or 
blind,  or  unable  to  digest,  as  I  can  judge  of  these  three  conditions 
from  thorough  knowledge  ;  but  it  is  long  since  I  gave  up  deciding 
about  trifles,  and  longer  still  about  important  things.  I  confine  my- 
self to  believing  that  if  you  have  sun  in  the  beautiful  house  you  have 
built  for  yourself,  you  must  have  tolerable  moments  ;  that  is  all  we 
can  expect  at  our  years.  Cicero  wrote  a  fine  treatise  on  old  age,  but 
he  did  not  prove  his  work  by  his  life;  his  last  years  were  very  un- 
happy. You  have  lived  longer  and  more  happily  than  he.  You 
have  had  nothing  to  do  with  perpetual  dictators,  or  with  triumvirs. 
Your  lot  has  been,  and  is  still,  one  of  the  most  desirable  in  this  great 
lottery  where  the  lucky  tickets  are  rare,  and  where  the  grand  prize  of 
continual  happiness  was  never  won  by  anybody.  Your  philosophy 
has  never  been  upset  by  chimeras  which  have  sometimes  muddled 
very  good  brains.  You  have  never  been,  in  any  way,  a  chadatan,  or 
the  dupe  of  charlatans  ;  and  1  count  that  as  an  uncommon  merit 
which  contributes  to  the  shadow  of  felicity  which  we  enjoy  in  this 
short  life." 

Lord  Chesterfield  died  on  the  24th  of  March,  1773. 
In  thus  indicating  his  charming  course  of  worldly 
education,  it  has  not  seemed  to  me  out  ot  place  to 
take  lessons  in  good  breeding  and  polite  manners, 
even  in  a  democracy;  and  to  take  them  from  a  man 


3o8  Xor&  CbesterfielD. 

whose  name  is  so  closely  connected  with  those  of 
Voltaire  and  Montesquieu;  a  man  who,  more  than 
any  other  of  his  compatriots,  showed  remarkable 
predilections  for  our  nation;  who  more  than  was 
reasonable,  perhaps,  delighted  in  our  agreeable  qual- 
ities; who  also  appreciated  our  graver  qualities,  and 
of  whom  one  might  say,  for  all  eulogy,  that  his  mind 
was  French,  if  he  had  not  possessed  in  the  warmth 
and  vivacity  of  his  wit  that  gift  of  imagination  which 
is  the  sign-manual  of  his  race. 


JfranF^Ifm 


309 


Benjamin  jfranftltn. 

THERE  are  certain  foreign  names  which,  in  some 
respects,  belong  to  France,  or,  at  least,  touch 
her  very  closely.  The  eighteenth  century  had 
several  which,  at  certain  moments,  have  been  wel- 
comed and  almost  adopted  by  us;  they  would  form 
quite  a  list  from  Bolingbroke  to  Franklin.  In  naming 
those  two  men,  1  have  named  two  great  inoculators  in 
the  moral  or  philosophical  order;  but  Bolingbroke,  in 
exile,  and  coming  at  the  beginning  of  the  century, 
affected  a  few  persons  only,  whereas  Franklin,  coming 
later,  and  at  an  epoch  of  general  fermentation,  oper- 
ated on  a  great  number.  The  history  of  ideas  and  of 
public  opinion  in  the  years  that  preceded  the  French 
Revolution  would  be  incomplete  if  we  did  not  pause 
to  study  Franklin.  1  shall  try  to  do  so  by  the  help  of 
certain  published  works  upon  him,  but,  above  all,  by 
studying  his  own  words. 

Franklin  wrote  his  "  Memoirs,"  which,  unfortun- 
ately, he  never  finished.  The  first  part,  addressed  to 
his  son,  was  written  during  his  stay  in  England,  in 
1771 ;  in  it  he  gives  a  detailed  and  intimate  history  of 
himself  until  his  twenty-fifth  year.     The  great  public 

3" 


312  Benjamin  3Franl?lin. 

affairs  in  whicli  he  was  soon  more  and  more  deeply 
engaged  leaving  him  no  leisure,  he  did  not  resume 
his  narrative  until  urged  by  friends  to  do  so  during  his 
sojourn  in  Paris  in  1784.  This  second  part  of  the 
"Memoirs,"  which  shows  him  busy  with  affairs  of 
public  interest  and  with  the  political  management  of 
Pennsylvania,  comes  down  to  the  period  of  his  first 
mission  to  England  in  1757,  when,  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
one,  he  is  commissioned  by  his  compatriots  to  go  and 
plead  their  interests  against  the  descendants  of  William 
Penn,  who  were  abusing  their  rights.  From  that 
period  we  have  nothing  more  than  fragments  of  nar- 
rative and  his  "  Correspondence,"  which,  it  is  true,  is 
very  complete,  and  leaves  little  to  be  desired.  Never- 
theless, the  judicious,  shrewd,  and  amiable  guide  does 
not  lead  us  by  the  hand  to  the  end,  and  that  is  a  dis- 
tinct loss.  The  two  parts  of  the  "  Memoirs  "  that  we 
do  possess  are  fully  sufficient,  however,  to  show  us 
the  man  himself,  and  they  make  the  most  original  and 
most  profitable  reading  to  be  found  in  this  familiar 
and  wholly  modern  style  of  book. 

Franklin  was  a  man  rightly  named,  and  he  well 
justified  his  name;  for  that  word  "Franklin"  signified 
primitively  a  free  man,  a  freeholder,  enjoying  on  a 
little  property  of  his  own  a  rural  and  natural  life.  His 
family  were  natives  of  Northamptonshire  in  England, 
where,  for  more  than  three  hundred  years,  they  had 
possessed  a  small  holding,  to  the  products  of  which 
were  added  the  profits  of  a  forge.     These  blacksmith 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN. 
From  an  oil  painting  in  the  possession  of  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania. 


Benjamin  dfranl^Un,  313 

farmers  were  Protestants  of  the  old  stamp,  faithful  to 
the  Anglican  dogma,  even  under  the  persecuting  reign 
of  Queen  Mary.  Towards  the  close  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  II,  an  uncle  of  Franklin  and  his  father  adopted 
the  doctrines  of  certain  non-conformist  preachers. 
The  father  emigrated  young,  in  1682,  carrying  wife 
and  children  to  America,  where  he  settled  at  Boston 
in  New  England.  Benjamin  Franklin  was  born  in 
Boston,  January  17,  1706,  the  last  son  of  a  numerous 
family:  two  sisters  were  born  after  him,  making,  in 
all,  sixteen  children  by  two  mothers.  His  father,  who 
had  been  a  dyer  in  England,  started  in  Boston  a  manu- 
factory of  soap  and  candles.  He  thought  at  first  of 
devoting  Benjamin  to  the  service  of  the  Church,  as  the 
tenth,  or  tithe,  of  his  sons;  but,  his  small  means  not 
permitting  it,  he  put  him  into  his  own  business,  and 
employed  him  in  cutting  wicks  and  filling  moulds 
with  tallow.  Young  Franklin  had  a  decided  taste  for 
the  sea;  he  would  there  have  found  a  career  well 
suited  to  the  exercise  of  his  natural  qualities  of  bold- 
ness, prudence,  and  constant  observation.  His  father 
opposed  it.  This  father,  a  simple  artisan,  was,  accord- 
ing to  his  son,  a  man  of  strong  sense  and  solid  mind, 
a  good  judge  in  all  matters  of  private  or  general  inter- 
est that  demanded  caution.  His  advice  counted  for 
much,  and  the  people  of  his  region  were  not  slow, 
when  need  was,  to  consult  him.  He  died  at  eighty- 
nine  years  of  age;  and  his  wife,  Benjamin's  mother, 
died  at  eighty-five;  the  boy,  therefore,  in  his  humble 


314  Benjamin  ifranftUn. 

sphere,  came  of  a  strong  and  healthy  race;  he  was  its 
emancipated  scion,  and  he  brought  it  to  perfection  in 
himself 

This  emancipation  of  his  intellect  seems  to  have 
suffered  neither  obstruction  nor  delay.  From  child- 
hood he  had  a  passionate  love  for  reading;  his  father's 
library,  we  can  well  believe,  was  ill-supplied;  it  con- 
sisted chiefly  of  books  on  religious  polemics.  He 
read  them;  but  above  all,  he  read  "  Plutarch's  Lives," 
which,  by  a  lucky  chance,  was  among  them.  He 
bought  a  few  books  of  travels;  a  little  later,  a  dilapi- 
dated volume  of  Addison's  "Spectator"  fell  into  his 
hands  and  served  him  to  form  a  style.  Half  from  recol- 
lection, half  by  invention,  he  himself  tried  to  write  on 
some  of  the  same  subjects;  then,  comparing  what  he 
had  written  with  the  original,  he  corrected  his  faults, 
and  he  fancied  sometimes  that  on  points  of  detail  he 
was  not  always  worsted. 

When  he  read  this  ragged  volume  of  the  "Specta- 
tor "  he  was  no  longer  working  in  his  father's  shop. 
The  latter,  seeing  his  repugnance  to  the  business  of 
making  candles,  and  having  tried  to  turn  him  to  some 
mechanical  trade  properly  so  called  (upholsterer, 
turner,  etc.),  finally  apprenticed  him  to  another  of  his 
sons,  a  printer.  Benjamin  was  then  twelve  years  old, 
and  he  remained  an  apprentice  till  he  was  twenty-one. 
His  great  anxiety  was  to  procure  books  and  to  hus- 
band the  time  to  read  them,  all  the  while  doing  his 
work  faithfully.     Having  read,   when  he  was  about 


Benjamin  jfranftlln.  315 

sixteen,  a  book  which  recommended  an  exclusively- 
vegetable  diet,  he  resolved  to  try  it,  as  being  more 
philosophical  as  well  as  more  economical.  When  his 
comrades  left  the  printing-office  to  get  their  meals,  he 
quickly  ate  his,  which  he  had  frugally  prepared  him- 
self, and  the  time  he  thus  gained  he  spent  in  reading, 
studying  arithmetic  and  the  first  elements  of  geometry, 
but  above  all,  in  reading  Locke  on  the  "  Human 
Understanding,"  and  the  "  Art  of  Thinking  "  by  the 
gentlemen  of  Port-Royal. 

Never  did  a  more  vigorous  and  healthy  mind  train 
itself  with  less  cost,  and  react  upon  itself  with  greater 
freedom  and  fewer  scholastic  prejudices.  Let  us  consider 
what  Boston,  or  any  other  city  in  North  America,  was 
at  that  date.  There  were  provinces  in  which  Quakers 
made  nearly  one-third  of  the  population;  the  various 
Presbyterian  or  dissenting  sects  were  the  majority. 
From  the  first  consideration  that  he  gave  those  sects, 
all,  more  or  less,  emanating  from  Calvin,  Franklin  was 
unable  to  accept  their  anti-natural  and  crushing  dog- 
mas. He  was  a  freethinker  and  a  deist;  and  at  first 
he  was  so  with  that  fresh  ardour  and  need  of  prose- 
lyting which  is  so  natural  to  youth.  He  liked  argu- 
ments on  such  subjects,  which  sharpened  his  dialectic 
subtlety,  but,  little  by  little,  he  corrected  himself  of 
that  tendency.  Having  obtained  a  copy  of  the  "  Mem- 
orable Sayings  "  of  Socrates,  by  Xenophon,  he  took 
pleasure  in  striving  to  reproduce  its  method;  he  owned 
afterwards  that  he  sometimes  abused  it.     He  amused 


3i6  aBenjamln  3Franf?lin» 

himself  by  leading  the  person  he  talked  with  into 
making  concessions  of  which  the  latter  did  not  foresee 
the  consequences,  and  then  he  triumphed  in  the 
inextricable  muddle  into  which  he  had  led  him.  One 
of  the  master-printers  (Keimer),  for  whom  he  after- 
wards worked  in  Philadelphia,  had  been  caught  so 
often,  that  finally  he  refused  to  answer  Franklin's  sim- 
plest questions  without  first  asking  him,  "  What  are 
you  aiming  to  infer  ?  "  This  rather  Scotian  and  so- 
phistical method,  which  Socrates  himself  does  not  seem 
to  me  to  have  escaped  wholly,  was  one  of  the  perver- 
sities of  Franklin's  youth  ;  he  cured  himself  gradually, 
limiting  the  expression  of  his  thought  to  the  dubitable 
form,  and  avoiding  a  dogmatic  appearance.  He  had 
reflected  much  on  the  manner  of  persuading  men 
through  their  own  interests,  and  he  recognised  that 
for  that  end  we  must  not  seem  too  sure  of  our  own 
opinion;  men  will  agree  better  and  consent  more 
readily  to  receive  from  us  what  they  think  they  partly 
find  in  themselves. 

Montesquieu,  in  the  Lettres  Persanes,  speaks  of  a 
person  with  a  positive  and  dictatorial  tone — such  as 
we  still  know  in  these  days:  "  1  found  myself  lately," 
writes  Rica  to  Usbek,  "  in  company  with  a  man  very 
content  with  himself  In  one  quarter  of  an  hour  he 
had  decided  three  questions  of  morals,  four  histori- 
cal problems,  and  five  points  of  physics.  I  never  be- 
fore met  so  universal  a  decisionist."  Franklin  was 
quite  the  contrary  of  that  man.     He  ended  by  sup- 


3Benjamin  ifranftltn.  317 

pressing   in    his    vocabulary    the    words    certainly, 
undoubtedly: 

"  I  adopted  in  their  place,"  he  says,  "  '  I  conceive,'  '  I  presume,' 
'  1  imagine,'  that  such  a  thing  is  thus  or  thus;  or  else  1  say:  '  It 
seems  to  me  at  present.'  When  a  person  puts  forward  something 
that  I  believe  to  be  an  error,  1  refuse  myself  the  pleasure  of  contradict- 
ing him  promptly,  and  instantly  demonstrating  the  absurdity  of  his 
proposition ;  in  replying,  1  begin  by  observing  that  in  certain  cases  or 
circumstances,  his  opinion  might  be  just,  but  that,  in  the  present  case, 
it  seemed  to  me  that  there  might  be  some  difference,  etc.  I  soon 
found  the  advantage  of  this  change  of  tone.  The  conversations  I  had 
were  more  agreeable;  the  modest  manner  in  which  1  put  forth  my 
opinions  procured  them  a  readier  reception  and  less  contradiction;  I 
had  less  mortification  myself  when  1  found  out  I  was  wrong;  and  I  was 
more  able  to  make  others  see  that  they  were  wrong  and  bring  them  to 
agree  with  me  when  I  was  right.  This  method,  which  I  did  not  adopt 
without  doing  some  violence  to  my  natural  inclination,  became  to  me 
in  the  long  run  easy,  and  so  habitual  that  perhaps  no  one,  for  the  last 
fifty  years,  has  heard  a  dogmatic  expression  escape  my  lips." 

He  attributes  to  this  precaution — after  his  known 
character  for  integrity — the  influence  he  obtained  with 
his  compatriots  in  his  various  proposals  for  the  public 
good.  He  tells  us  his  secret;  the  artifice  is  simple 
and  innocent,  it  comes  originally  from  Socrates ;  let  us 
beware  of  confounding  it,  in  any  case,  with  the  decep- 
tion of  Ulysses. 

Franklin's  brother  began,  about  the  year  1720,  or 
1 72 1,  to  print  a  newspaper;  it  was  the  second  that 
appeared  in  America.  Benjamin,  who  saw  its  making, 
who  heard  the  talk  of  those  who  contributed  by  their 
pens,  and  who  himself  worked  at  printing  it,  had  a 
desire  to  write  a  few  articles,  but  feeling  sure  they 


31 8  JBenjamin  jfranftUn. 

would  be  rejected  with  contempt  on  account  of  his 
youth,  if  the  writer  were  known,  he  sent  them  anony- 
mously, disguising  his  writing.  The  articles  suc- 
ceeded, he  rejoiced  inwardly,  and  kept  the  secret  until 
he  finished  all  that  he  then  had  to  say.  His  brother 
was  soon  after  arrested  and  imprisoned  by  order  of  the 
President  of  the  General  Assembly  of  the  province  for 
having  inserted  an  opposition  political  article;  and  was 
released  only  under  prohibition  of  continuing  to  print 
his  newspaper.  He  evaded  the  prohibition  by  issuing 
the  paper  under  the  name  of  his  brother,  young 
Benjamin,  to  whom  he  returned,  as  a  mere  form,  his 
bond  of  apprenticeship  with  the  release  therefrom.  It 
was  settled,  however,  by  a  new  agreement  intended  to 
to  be  kept  secret,  that  Benjamin  should  continue  to 
serve  as  apprentice  to  the  end  of  the  term  originally 
agreed  upon.  Here  we  find  the  confession  of  a  fault 
by  Franklin,  or  what  he  calls,  in  his  language  as  a 
printer,  "  one  of  the  first  errata  of  my  life."  Ill-treated 
by  his  brother,  who  was  violent  and  sometimes  came 
to  blows,  he  resolved,  after  one  of  these  quarrels,  to 
quit  him,  and  he  did  so  on  the  warranty  of  the  certifi- 
cate of  release  from  apprenticeship,  knowing  well 
that  his  brother  would  not  dare  to  produce  the  secret 
agreement. 

The  confessions  that  Franklin  makes  of  his  wrong- 
doings (and  we  find  three  or  four  in  these  years  of  his 
youth)  have  a  character  of  sincerity  and  simplicity 
which  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the  man 


Benjamin  jfranMin.  319 

who  makes  them.  When  Rousseau,  in  his  "Confes- 
sions," makes  such  avowals,  he  is  very  near  to 
boasting  of  them  at  the  moment  he  confesses  them. 
Franklin,  who,  in  any  case,  has  only  slight  wrong- 
doings with  which  to  reproach  himself,  is  less  severe 
upon  his  actions  and  does  not  boast  of  them  at  all.  He 
says,  in  a  charming  manner,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
"  Memoirs,"  that  he  would  have  "no  objection  to  live 
the  same  career  over  again,  from  beginning  to  end, 
claiming  only  the  privilege  that  all  authors  have,  to 
correct  in  the  second  edition  the  faults  of  the  first." 

On  leaving  his  brother's  printing-office,  he  could  not 
find  work  in  Boston  and  started  for  New  York,  thence 
for  Philadelphia,  which  became  his  city  of  adoption. 
He  arrived  in  a  pitiable  plight,  in  workmen's  clothes, 
soaked  with  rain,  having  rowed  the  boat  during  the 
crossing.  He  had  little  money  left  in  his  pocket,  yet 
he  wished  to  pay  his  passage  to  the  boatman.  They 
refused  at  first  to  take  it,  saying  he  had  paid  his  way 
by  rowing;  but  he  insisted  on  giving  them  his  shilling 
in  coppers.  "Men,"  he  remarked,  "  are  sometimes 
more  generous  when  they  have  little  than  when  they 
have  much;  perhaps  to  prevent  people  from  suspect- 
ing how  little  they  have."  He  made  his  entry  into  the 
city  carrying  three  loaves  of  bread  which  he  had  just 
bought,  one  under  each  arm  and  eating  the  third.  He 
passed  thus  before  the  house  of  his  future  wife.  Miss 
Read,  who  was  at  her  door,  and  thought  his  appear- 
ance extraordinary.     He  was  now  seventeen  years  of 


320  3Benjamin  iFtanftlfn. 

age,  and  alone  in  a  strange  city  to  make  his  way  in 
the  world. 

He  found  employment  with  one  of  the  two  printers 
of  the  city,  and  soon  saw  that  both  knew  little  of  their 
business.  He  was  noticed  by  the  governor.  Sir  Will- 
iam Keith.  In  those  new  countries  there  was  less  dis- 
tance between  the  classes  than  there  was  in  the  old 
countries.  The  governor,  who  seemed  to  take  a  fancy 
to  him,  made  him,  secretly,  fine  promises  and  great 
offers  to  induce  him  to  set  up  for  himself.  After  a 
year's  stay,  Franklin  paid  a  visit  to  Boston  to  obtain 
his  father's  permission  to  go  into  business  for  himself. 
He  was  well  dressed,  he  had  money  in  his  pocket, 
which  he  jingled  when  he  went  to  see  his  old  com- 
rades in  the  printing-office  of  his  brother,  who  never 
forgave  him.  His  father,  who  did  not  think  him  suffi- 
ciently mature,  and  who  distrusted  a  certain  tendency 
he  fancied  he  saw  in  him  to  satire  and  pamphlet- writ- 
ing, turned  a  deaf  ear  to  a  letter  from  Governor  Keith, 
but  did  not  forbid  his  son  to  return  to  Philadelphia. 
Franklin  returned,  and,  while  remaining  a  journey- 
man-printer, continued  to  train  himself  by  study  to 
literary  composition;  he  made  friends  of  certain  young 
men  of  the  city  who  liked  reading,  as  he  did,  he  knew 
Miss  Read,  and  paid  a  little  court  to  her;  then,  tempted 
again  by  the  promises  of  the  governor,  who  talked  to 
him  incessantly  of  setting  up  in  business  for  himself 
he  resolved  to  go  to  England  and  buy  the  outfit  for  a 
small  printing-office. 


Benjamin  jfranklin,  321 

He  embarked  on  this  first  voyage  to  England  at  the 
close  of  the  year  1724,  being  then  nineteen  years  of 
age.  He  found,  on  arriving,  that  the  pretended  letters 
of  introduction  given  him  by  Governor  Keith  were 
lures  or  decoys;  in  short,  he  had  been  hoaxed.  He 
found  work  in  the  great  printing-office  of  Palmer, 
then  with  Watts,  perfected  himself  in  his  trade,  moral- 
ised to  his  comrades,  tried  to  teach  them  a  bet- 
ter hygiene,  a  more  healthy  regimen,  and  preached 
to  them  by  example.  He  met  a  few  men  of  Letters. 
When  "composing,"  as  printer,  a  book  on  "Natural 
Religion,"  by  Wollaston,  the  idea  came  to  him  of 
writing  a  short  metaphysical  "Dissertation  "  to  refute 
some  points  in  the  book.  This  little  work,  of  which 
a  few  copies  were  printed,  brought  him  into  relations 
with  certain  freethinking  men.  In  short,  during  this 
stay  of  eighteen  months  in  London  he  launched  him- 
self in  more  ways  than  one;  he  learned  from  several 
schools;  but  especially  did  he  mature  quickly  in  prac- 
tical knowledge  of  men  and  of  life. 

On  leaving  Philadelphia  he  had  exchanged  promises 
with  Miss  Read,  whom  he  expected  to  marry.  One 
of  the  errors,  the  errata  of  his  life,  was  that  soon  after 
his  arrival  in  London  he  wrote  a  single  letter  to  this 
very  worthy  young  girl,  telling  her  that  it  was  im- 
probable he  should  return  to  Philadelphia  as  soon  as 
they  had  expected.  From  this  indifference  it  resulted 
that  the  young  lady,  urged  by  her  mother,  married 
another    man,  was  very  unhappy,  and  Franklin  did 

VOL.  I. 21. 


322  Benjamin  jfranftUn. 

not  marry  her  till  some  years  later  when,  her  first 
marriage  being  dissolved,  she  had  recovered  her 
liberty. 

Here  a  reflection  begins  to  dawn  upon  us.  An  ideal 
is  lacking  in  this  healthy,  upright,  able,  frugal,  labori- 
ous nature  of  Franklin — the  fine  flower  of  enthusiasm, 
tenderness,  sacrifice, — all  that  is  the  dream,  and  also 
the  charm  and  the  honour  of  poetic  natures.  In  what 
I  have  to  say  of  him  I  shall  not  assume  to  depreciate  or 
belittle  him  in  any  way;  1  simply  seek  to  define  him. 
Let  us  take  him  in  the  matter  of  love.  Young,  he 
feels  no  irresistible,  all-constraining  sentiment;  he  sees 
Miss  Read,  she  suits  him;  he  conceives  both  respect 
and  affection  for  her;  but  all  is  subordinate  to  what  is 
possible  and  reasonable.  Arrived  in  England,  having 
exchanged  promises  with  her,  he  begins  to  doubt 
whether  they  can  be  fulfilled;  he  tells  her  so  honestly, 
without  otherwise  showing  much  grief.  "The  fact 
is,"  he  says,  by  way  of  excuse,  "the  expenses  1  have 
had  to  incur  make  it  impossible  for  me  to  pay  my  pas- 
sage." Later,  when  he  returns  to  Philadelphia,  with 
good  prospects,  and  sees  Miss  Read,  sad,  melancholy, 
a  widow,  or  nearly  so,  he  returns  to  her;  but  not 
until  he  has  himself  missed  another  marriage,  and  be- 
cause he  thinks  the  state  of  celibacy  full  of  vices  and 
inconveniences.  "Marriage,  after  all,"  he  says,  "is 
the  natural  state  of  man.  An  unmarried  man  is  not  a 
complete  human  being:  he  resembles  one-half  of  a 
pair   of  scissors   without  its  other  half,  and  conse- 


3Benjamin  jfranftlin.  323 

quently,  is  not  even  half  as  useful  as  if  the  two  were 
put  together." 

He  tries  to  correct  his  first  mistake  and  succeeds. 
Married  at  twenty-four  years  of  age,  he  finds  in  his 
wife  for  many  years  a  tender  and  faithful  companion, 
who  aids  him  much  in  the  work  of  his  shop.  That  is 
his  ideal:  do  not  ask  more  of  him.  When  he  is  old 
and  in  Paris,  he  spends  a  day  at  Auteuil,  talking  non- 
sense with  Mme.  Helvetius;  telling  her  he  wished  to 
marry  her  and  that  she  was  very  foolish  to  resolve  to 
be  faithful  to  her  late  husband,  the  philosopher.  The 
next  morning  he  writes  a  very  pretty  letter  to  her,  in 
which  he  pretends  that  he  has  been  transported  in 
a  dream  to  the  Elysian  Fields;  where  he  finds  Helve- 
tius in  person,  who  has  married  again,  and  is  much 
astonished  to  hear  that  his  former  wife  on  earth  per- 
sists in  being  faithful  to  his  memory.  While  he  talks 
very  pleasantly  with  Franklin,  in  comes  the  new  Mme. 
Helvetius,  bringing  coffee  which  she  has  prepared 
with  her  own  hands: 

"  Instantly,"  writes  the  lively  old  man,  "  I  recognised  her  as 
Madame  Franklin,  my  former  American  wife.  I  claimed  her;  but  she 
said,  coldly:  '  1  was  your  good  wife  for  forty-nine  years  and  four 
months,  almost  half  a  century;  be  satisfied  with  that.  I  have  formed 
here  a  new  connection  which  will  last  through  eternity.' —  Displeased 
with  this  refusal  of  my  Eurydice,  1  at  once  resolved  to  quit  those  thank- 
less shades  and  return  to  this  good  world  to  see  the  sun  and  you.  Here 
I  am;  let  us  avenge  ourselves." 

All  that  is  gay,  a  pretty,  piquant,  social  jest,  but  the 
lack  of  sentiment  reveals  itself. 


324  JSenjamin  jfcanlilin. 

Also,  there  is  a  flower,  a  bloom,  of  religion,  of 
honour,  of  chivalry,  which  we  must  not  ask  of  Frank- 
lin. He  is  not  obliged  to  comprehend  chivalry,  and 
he  gives  himself  no  trouble  to  do  so.  When  the 
founding  of  the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati  is  in  ques- 
tion, he  opposes  it  with  good  reasons,  but  he  makes 
no  reservation  in  favour  of  chivalry,  considered  his- 
torically and  in  the  past.  He  forgets  Lord  Falkland, 
that  perfect  result  of  delicate  and  gallant  chivalry 
grafted  upon  ancient  loyalty.  He  applies  to  the  ex- 
amination of  chivalry  a  method  of  moral  arithmetic 
which  he  is  fond  of  employing,  and  starting  from  the 
principle  that  "  a  son  derives  only  half  from  the  family 
of  his  father,  the  other  half  from  that  of  his  mother,"  he 
proves  by  figures  that  in  nine  generations  (supposing 
a  pure,  intact  genealogy)  there  remains  in  the  person 
who  inherits  the  title  of  "  Knight "  only  the  five-hun- 
dred-dozenth part  of  the  original  knight  or  noble. 
He  brings  everything  down  to  arithmetic  and  strict 
reality,  assigning  no  part  to  human  imagination. 

So  with  religion.  He  returns  to  it,  after  his  early 
freethinking,  in  a  sincere  and  touching  manner.  I 
know  no  deist  who  shows  a  more  living  sense  of  faith 
than  Franklin;  he  seems  to  believe,  on  all  occasions,  in 
a  Providence  actually  present  and  perceptible.  But 
there  again,  what  was  it  that  most  contributed  to 
bring  him  back  to  religion  ?  It  was  seeing  that,  dur- 
ing the  time  when  he  was  decidedly  a  sceptic,  he 
failed  in  fidelity  to  a  trust,  and  that  two  or  three  other 


Benjamin  jfranF^lin,  325 

sceptics  of  his  acquaintance  allowed  themselves  to 
do  him  certain  wrongs  involving  money  and  integrity. 
"  I  began  to  suspect,"  he  says,  "  that  these  doctrines, 
though  they  may  be  true,  are  not  very  profitable." 
Thus  he  returns  to  religion  through  utility.  The  use- 
ful is  always,  and  preferably,  his  measure. 

Franklin  is  by  nature  above  all  the  anxieties  of  a 
Childe-Harold,  all  the  susceptibilities  of  a  Chateau- 
briand. We,  of  the  hasty  and  vivacious  French  race, 
would  like  him  to  have  had  a  little  of  ourselves  in  him. 
The  devotion  of  a  Chevalier  d'Assas,  the  passion  of  a 
Chevalier  Des  Grieux,  the  folly  of  Parisina  or  Ariel,  all 
that  is  in  our  thoughts,  and  we  feel  that  the  wings  to 
soar  are  lacking,  at  any  rate  in  youth,  when  a  man 
cannot  pass  at  will  from  one  of  these  worlds  to  the 
other.  Nevertheless,  let  us  see  Franklin  just  as  he 
was  in  his  moral  beauty,  and  in  his  true  stature.  That 
judicious,  firm,  shrewd,  comprehending,  honest  man 
will  be  unshaken,  immovable,  when  injustice  assails 
him  and  his  compatriots.  He  will  also  do  all  in  his 
power,  for  years,  with  the  mother-country,  to  en- 
lighten opinion,  and  prevent  extreme  measures;  until 
the  last  instant  he  will  strive  to  bring  about  a  reconcili- 
ation founded  on  equity.  One  day  when  a  man  of 
great  influence  in  England,  Lord  Howe,  gave  him 
hopes  (on  the  very  eve  of  the  rupture),  a  tear  of  joy 
rolled  down  his  cheek;  but  when  injustice  hardened 
itself  and  an  obstinate  pride  plugged  its  ears,  then  the 
purest  and   most  invincible  of  passions  swept  him 


326  3Ben|amin  jfranftltn. 

along,  and  he  who  thought  that  "  all  peace  is  good 
and  all  war  evil  "  was  for  war  then,  for  the  holy  war 
of  a  legitimate  and  patriotic  defence. 

In  the  ordinary  current  of  his  life  Franklin  is  ever 
the  most  gracious,  smiling,  and  persuasive  of  utili- 
tarians. "  1  approve,  for  my  part,  that  people  should 
amuse  themselves  now  and  then  with  poesy,"  he  says, 
"  as  much  as  is  needed  to  perfect  their  style;  but  not 
beyond  that."  Yet  he  himself,  without  being  aware 
of  it,  has  a  form  of  imagination  and  a  way  of  saying 
things  that  make  him  not  only  the  philosopher,  but 
sometimes  the  poet  of  common  sense.  In  a  little  Diary 
of  travel,  written  at  the  age  of  twenty  (1726)  during 
his  return  from  London  to  Philadelphia,  speaking  of  I 
know  not  what  atrocious  description  that  was  given 
him  of  a  former  Governor  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  he  says : 

"  What  surprised  me  was  that  the  old  fellow  of  a  porter  spoke  to 
me  of  the  governor  with  a  perfect  notion  of  his  character.  In  a  word, 
I  believe  it  to  be  impossible  that  a  man,  had  he  the  craft  of  a  devil,  can 
live  and  die  a  wretch  and  yet  conceal  it  so  well  that  he  could  take  with 
him  to  the  grave  the  reputation  of  an  honourable  man.  It  will  always 
happen  that,  by  one  accident  or  another,  he  is  unmasked.  Truth  and 
sincerity  have  a  certain  natural  and  distinctive  lustre  which  can  never 
be  counterfeited;  they  are  like  fire  and  flame,  no  one  can  paint  them." 

Pointing  out  a  method  of  economy  that  would  en- 
sure having  money  at  all  times  in  our  pocket — a 
method  that  consists  (independently  of  the  funda- 
mental counsel  of  work  and  honesty)  in  "spending 
always  a  penny  less  than  the  net  profit,"  he  adds: 

"  In  that  way  thy  flat  pocket  will  begin  to  swell  and  will  no 


Benjamin  jfranftlin.  327 

longer  cry  out  that  its  belly  is  empty.  Thou  wilt  not  be  insulted  by 
thy  creditors,  or  harassed  by  want,  gnawed  by  hunger,  or  numbed 
by  nakedness.  The  whole  horizon  will  shine  brighter  to  thine  eyes, 
and  pleasure  will  gush  from  the  innermost  recesses  of  thy  heart." 

If  ever  the  doctrine  of  economy  came  into  the  world 
with  contentment  and  mirth  and  a  sort  of  familiar 
poesy  of  expression,  we  must  look  for  it  in  Franklin. 
An  inward  warmth  of  feeling  animates  his  prudence ; 
a  ray  of  sun  lights  up  and  cheers  his  honesty. 

Franklin  returned  to  Philadelphia  from  his  first  jour- 
ney to  England  in  1726;  and,  after  a  few  attempts,  he 
established  himself  as  a  printer  at  twenty-one  years  of 
age,  first  with  a  partner,  but  soon  alone.  He  makes 
a  sort  of  moral  inventory  of  himself  at  this  decisive 
moment  of  his  life.  He  enumerates  his  principles,  from 
which  he  never  afterwards  departed.  "I  was  con- 
vinced that  truth,  sincerity,  and  integrity  in  the  relations 
between  men  are  of  the  first  importance  for  the  happi- 
ness of  life,  and  I  formed  the  written  resolution,  which 
is  always  placed  in  my  Diary-book,  to  practise  them 
as  long  as  I  live."  To  this  real  and  fundamental  pro- 
bity, Franklin  took  pains  to  add  the  legitimate  social 
profit  that  accrued  from  it.  But,  while  observing  the 
constant  little  cares  that  he  gave  and  the  minute  pains 
he  took  to  make  himself  more  and  more  virtuous 
within,  and  more  and  more  considered  without  we 
must  never  separate  in  him  the  appearance  from  the 
reality.  He  was,  if  you  will,  the  shrewdest  and  most 
prudent  of  honest  men,  but  also  the  least  hypocritical. 


328  Benjamin  jfranKlin, 

"  In  order  to  insure,"  he  says,  "  my  credit  and  my  reputation  as  a 
merchant,  I  took  care  to  be  laborious  and  economical  not  only  in  re- 
ality, but  also  to  avoid  all  appearance  to  the  contrary.  I  clothed  my- 
self simply;  I  was  never  seen  in  any  of  the  resorts  of  idle  company.  1 
joined  no  fishing  or  hunting  parties;  it  is  true  that  a  book  sometimes 
debauched  me  from  my  work;  but  that  was  rarely,  and  at  home, 
without  causing  scandal.  To  show  that  I  was  not  above  my  trade,  I 
sometimes  took  to  the  printing-office,  through  the  streets  on  a  wheel- 
barrow, the  paper  I  had  bought  in  the  shops. 

Franklin's  wheelbarrow  has  sometimes  been  cited 
in  contrast  with  his  future  destiny ;  but,  as  we  see,  it 
was  a  legitimate  little  device  on  his  part,  rather  than  a 
necessity  of  his  position. 

About  this  time,  Franklin  formed  a  club  of  the  edu- 
cated young  men  whom  he  knew,  to  discuss  and 
improve  themselves  in  culture  of  mind  and  in  the 
search  after  truth.  After  writing  some  articles  in 
the  "Journal"  already  established  in  Philadelphia,  he 
was  not  long  in  having  a  newspaper  of  his  own, 
the  "Gazette,"  which  he  printed;  thus  obtaining  the 
principal  means  of  influence  and  of  civilisation  in  the 
city  and  in  the  province. 

In  order  to  judge  Franklin  as  a  literary  man,  an 
economist,  and  inventor  of  several  useful  inventions, 
we  must  picture  clearly  to  ourselves  this  young  man 
of  his  time  and  place,  in  the  midst  of  compatriots  who 
were  rough,  unequally  educated,  and  little  trained  in 
the  arts  of  life.  Franklin  appears  among  them  as  an 
indefatigable  educator  and  civiliser.  In  the  first  ar- 
ticles that  he  wrote  weekly  for  the  "Gazette,"  he 
endeavoured  to  polish  manners  and  customs,  to  cor- 


Benjamin  jfranftlm.  329 

rect  bad  and  uncivil  habits,  coarse  jesting,  visits  too 
long  and  intrusive,  and  persistent  popular  prejudices 
inconsistent  with  good  practices.  We  must  not 
ask  of  these  Essays  a  general  purpose  that  they  have 
not.  Later,  in  diplomatic  relations,  Lord  Shelburne 
when  negotiating  with  Franklin  observed  that  his 
principal  characteristic  in  dealing  with  public  affairs 
was,  "  not  to  embarrass  himself  by  trying  to  bring 
about  events,  but  only  to  profit  well  by  those  that 
happened,"  adding  that  he  had  "the  science  of  ex- 
pectant medicine."  In  the  first  part  of  Franklin's  life, 
although  he  seems  full  of  inventions  and  a  great  pro- 
moter of  all  matters  of  public  utility,  he  is  so  only  to 
the  degree  that  is  immediately  applicable;  he  never 
goes  beyond  that  limit;  he  is  practical  in  all  things. 

"It  is  an  amazing  thing,"  remarks  a  writer  of  the 
Franklin  school,  "that  one  of  the  passions  that  men 
have  less  of  and  which  it  is  most  difficult  to  develop 
in  them,  is  the  passion  for  their  own  comfort  and 
convenience."  Franklin  did  all  he  could  to  inoculate 
his  compatriots  with  that  passion,  and  make  them 
take  an  interest  in  the  useful  arts  and  thus  ameliorate 
their  lives.  He  contributed  not  only  to  found,  by  sub- 
scription, the  first  public  library,  the  first  Academic 
Society  (which  became  the  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania), and  the  first  hospital,  but  he  showed  men 
how  to  warm  their  homes  by  economical  stoves,  how 
to  pave  their  streets,  how  to  sweep  them  by  day, 
and  how  to  light  them  by  night  with  lamps  of  con- 


330  Benjamin  ifranftlin. 

venient  shape.  What  he  did  not  invent  himself,  he 
perfected;  and  the  idea,  passing  through  him,  became 
simplified,  yet  more  ingenious.  When  entering  into 
such  minute  details,  he  feels  the  need  of  excusing  him- 
self; but  at  the  same  time  he  thinks  that  nothing  is  to 
be  despised  that  is  serviceable  every  day  to  every- 
body. "  Human  happiness  is  less  the  result  of  great 
prizes  of  good  fortune,  which  rarely  come,  than  of 
the  many  little  enjoyments  that  reproduce  themselves 
daily." 

During  these  years  of  his  youth  and  of  the  first  half 
of  his  life,  not  a  single  project  of  public  interest  in 
Pennsylvania  came  up  that  his  hand  was  not  in  it. 
His  fellow-citizens  knew  this  well,  and  when  some 
new  enterprise  was  proposed  to  them  for  subscrip- 
tion their  first  words  were:  "Have  you  consulted 
Franklin?  what  does  he  think  of  it.?"  And  he,  be- 
fore proposing  anything  directly,  was  careful  to  pre- 
pare the  public  mind  by  writing  something  about  it 
in  his  "Gazette."  He  avoided  signing  his  name,  how- 
ever, in  order  to  spare  the  self-love  of  others.  No 
one  has  ever  used  a  newspaper  better  or  more  salu- 
tarily than  he.  We  may  say  that  he  was  wily  for  the 
public  good.  Counsellor,  teacher,  benefactor  of  his 
city,  such,  in  short,  was  his  role  before  the  collision 
of  the  colonies  with  the  mother-country. 

He  takes  pains  to  inform  us  that  this  application  to 
the  general  good  was  carried  on  without  injury  to  his 
private  interests;  in  no  wise  does  he  think  that  in 


Benjamin  3fran??lin.  331 

order  to  perform  public  duties  well  we  should  be  con- 
tent to  do  our  own  badly.  He  attained,  by  laborious 
ways,  to  an  honest  fortune  and  to  an  independence 
that  placed  him  in  a  position  to  follow  his  tastes  for 
study  and  for  the  sciences. 

During  his  whole  life,  Franklin  made  a  steady  and 
progressive  advance,  which  was  guided  by  an  un- 
varying plan.  When  about  twenty-four  years  of  age, 
he  conceived  the  bold  and  difficult  project  of  attaining 
to  moral  perfection,  and  to  do  so  he  set  to  work  like 
a  skilful  physician  who,  by  means  of  very  simple  and 
right  measures  which  he  combines,  obtains  quite  often 
great  results.  He  explains  to  us  in  detail  his  almost 
commercial  method:  his  memorandum  book  of  thir- 
teen virtues  (temperance,  silence,  order,  resolution, 
economy,  etc.),  and  the  little  synoptical  list,  on  which 
he  specified  his  faults  every  day  of  the  week,  occu- 
pying each  week  with  a  single  virtue  especially;  then 
passing  to  another,  so  as  to  make  the  course  complete  in 
thirteen  weeks;  making  four  courses  of  virtue  a  year: 

"Just,"  he  says,  "  as  a  man  who  has  a  garden  to  weed  does  not 
undertake  to  pull  up  all  the  weeds  at  once  (which  would  exceed  his 
capacity  and  strength),  but  he  works  on  one  patch  first,  and  having 
finished  that  he  goes  to  the  next — in  the  same  way  do  I  hope  for  the 
encouraging  pleasure  of  seeing  on  my  pages  the  progress  made  in  a 
virtue,  in  proportion  as  I  free  those  pages  from  their  bad  points,  until 
at  last,  after  a  certain  number  of  turns  I  shall  have  the  happiness  of 
seeing  my  note-book  clean  and  clear." 

It  is  difficult  for  us  not  to  smile  in  seeing  this  Art  of 
Virtue  thus  set  up  for  his  individual  use,  and  to  hear 


332  Benjamin  jfranKlin. 

him  tell  us,  moreover,  that  at  this  same  epoch  in  his 
life,  he  had  conceived  the  plan  of  forming,  among 
the  men  of  all  nations,  a  "party  united  for  virtue." 
There,  indeed,  Franklin  shows  that  he  had  his  hidden 
corner  of  dreams  and  of  excessive  moral  ambition, 
from  which  the  most  practical  of  men  are  not  always 
exempt.  He  was  much  struck  with  the  immense 
changes  in  the  world  that  a  single  man  of  reasonable 
capacity  can  bring  about  when  he  applies  himself 
with  continuity  and  fixity  to  his  object,  when  "he 
makes  it  his  business."  In  his  hours  of  speculative 
musing  he  very  willingly  let  his  thoughts  run,  some- 
times in  the  moral  order,  sometimes  in  the  natural 
science  order,  to  conjectures  and  hypotheses  that  were 
very  bold  and  very  far-reaching.  But  for  him  who 
mastered  his  passions  and  governed  himself  by  pru- 
dence, such  vagaries  of  speculation,  such  escapes  into 
space,  had  no  dangers;  he  returned,  in  the  practice  of 
daily  life,  to  experience  and  to  the  possible;  in  which 
his  disciples,  as  we  shall  see,  did  not  always  follow 
him. 

Nothing,  therefore,  came  to  mar  or  thwart  his  early 
and  well-considered  plans  for  the  amelioration  of  the 
moral  and  social  state  of  his  compatriots.  Among  his 
means  of  action,  we  must  place  the  Almanacs  that 
he  published  from  1732,  under  the  name  of  Richard 
Saunders,  otherwise  called  Poor  Richard.  Franklin 
had  by  nature  the  popular  gift  of  thinking  in  pro- 
verbs and  of  speaking  in  parables.     1  will  here  recall 


Benjamin  3franl?lin»  333 

only  a  few  of  the  best-known  proverbs  that  he  coined 
and  put  in  circulation: 

"  Idleness  is  like  rust,  it  consumes  faster  than  use  wears  out.  The 
Key  that  is  used  is  always  bright." 

"  Little  as  you  may  love  life,  do  not  waste  time;  it  is  the  stuff  life 
is  made  of" 

"  A  labourer  on  his  legs  is  taller  than  a  gentleman  on  his  knees." 

"  If  you  are  labourers  you  will  never  die  of  hunger:  hunger  may 
look  in  at  the  door  of  the  man  who  works,  but  it  cannot  enter." 

"  The  second  vice  is  lying;  the  first  is  to  run  in  debt.  Lies  mount 
astride  of  debt  and  ride  it." 

"  Lent  is  very  short  for  those  who  have  to  pay  at  Easter." 

"  Pride  is  a  beggar  that  cries  as  loud  as  want,  and  is  much  more 
insolent." 

"  Poverty  often  deprives  a  man  of  all  spirit  and  all  virtue;  it  is 
difficult  for  an  empty  sack  to  stand  up  straight." 

More  than  one  of  these  proverbs,  both  in  meaning 
and  in  turn  of  phrase,  recall  Hesiod  and  La  Fon- 
taine; but  especially  Hesiod,  speaking  in  prose  and 
in  modern  fashion,  among  a  rude  and  practical  race 
which  had  never  been  visited  by  the  Muses. 

As  for  the  fables  and  tales,  they  were  an  habitual 
form  of  speech  or  writing  with  Franklin;  everything 
supplied  him  with  matter  or  pretext.  In  his  old  age, 
he  scarcely  spoke  consecutively  unless  he  were  telling 
a  tale.  Some  of  these  tales  when  written  down  may 
seem  rather  childish;  others  are  very  pleasing;  but 
most  of  them  lose  much  in  not  coming  from  his  half- 
smiling  lips. 

He  began  to  enter  public  affairs,  properly  so-called, 
in  1736,  when  thirty  years  of  age,  as  secretary  of  the 
General  Assembly.     It  was  for  him  a  very  important 


334  Benjamin  ifranftUn. 

position  in  itself,  and  also  for  the  printing  matter  that 
it  procured  for  him.  The  first  year  he  was  elected 
without  opposition;  but  the  second  year  an  influen- 
tial member  spoke  against  him,  and  declared  that  he 
should  oppose  and  thwart  him  in  future.  Franklin 
imagined  a  means  of  winning  him  over  without  so- 
licitation or  baseness,  namely,  to  make  this  member 
do  him  a  little  service : 

"  Having  heard,"  he  says,  "that  he  had  in  his  library  a  very  rare 
and  curious  book,  I  wrote  him  a  line  in  which  1  expressed  my  great 
desire  to  look  over  the  volume,  and  asked  if  he  would  do  me  the 
favour  to  lend  it  to  me  for  a  few  days.  He  sent  it  to  me  immediately, 
and  I  returned  it  at  the  end  of  the  week,  with  another  note,  warmly 
expressing  my  gratitude  for  the  favour.  The  next  time  we  met  in  the 
Assembly  he  spoke  to  me  (which  he  had  never  done  before),  with 
much  civility;  and  after  that  he  always  showed  an  eagerness  to  serve 
me  on  all  occasions,  so  that  we  became  great  friends  and  our  friend- 
ship lasted  till  his  death.  This  is  only  another  proof  of  the  truth  of  an 
old  maxim  that  I  once  learned,  which  says:  '  He  who  has  once  done 
you  a  service  will  be  more  inclined  to  do  you  another,  than  the  man 
whom  you  have  yourself  benefited.'  " 

It  was  by  such  degrees  of  moral  sagacity,  of  judicious 
conduct,  of  rectitude  and  skill,  love  for  the  public 
weal  and  for  good  understanding  in  all  things,  that 
Franklin  prepared  himself,  little  by  little,  and  without 
knowing  it,  for  the  important  role  that  events  were 
reserving  for  him.  But,  worthy  and  respected  as  he 
was  among  his  own  people,  it  would  have  been  diffi- 
cult to  divine  in  him,  at  this  date,  the  man  of  whom 
Pitt  was  one  day,  in  defending  him  from  insult,  to 
say  so  magnificently  in  the  House  of  Lords,  that  he 


Benjamin  3fran[?Un.  335 

was  a  man  "who  did  honour  not  only  to  the  English 
nation,  but  to  human  nature,' 

Franklin's  "Memoirs"  are  full  of  interest  for  all 
those  who  have  had  a  toilsome  early  life,  and  have 
experienced  the  difficulties  of  existence  and  the  lack 
of  generosity  in  men,  but  who  are,  nevertheless,  not 
embittered,  not  posing  as  misanthropes,  nor  as  virtue 
unrecognised ;  not  spoiled  either,  nor  fallen  into  the  cor- 
ruption and  intrigues  of  self-interest;  men  who  have 
preserved  themselves  equally  from  the  evil  of  Jean- 
Jacques  and  from  the  vice  of  Figaro,  who,  wise, 
prudent,  discreet,  starting  from  hard  and  honest  gains, 
putting  cautiously,  but  boldly  if  need  be,  one  foot  be- 
fore the  other,  have  become,  in  various  degrees,  use- 
ful, honourable,  and  even  important  members  of  the 
great  human  Company — to  all  such,  and  to  all  whom 
the  same  circumstances  await,  these  "Memoirs"  are 
a  source  of  observation  that  will  always  be  applicable, 
and  of  truth  that  will  always  be  felt. 

I  am  not  writing  the  life  of  Franklin;  it  is  written 
by  himself,  and  where  he  stops  we  must  look  for  its 
continuation  in  the  excellent  work  of  Jared  Sparks, 
which  ought  to  be  translated  into  French.  My  desire 
is  to  show  the  philosopher  and  the  American  states- 
man in  his  early  conditions,  with  an  existence  already 
so  full  before  his  arrival  and  his  favour  in  France,  and 
before  he  embraced  Voltaire.  It  is  thus  only  that  we 
shall  feel  how  different  were  those  two  men  and  the 
two  races  which  they  represent. 


336  Benjamin  ifranftlin, 

Franklin  was  nearly  seventy-one  years  of  age  when 
he  came  to  France  at  the  close  of  1776.  He  was  fifty- 
one  when  his  compatriots  in  Philadelphia  chose  him, 
in  1757,  to  be  their  agent  in  England.  This  second 
time  that  he  went  there  he  appeared  as  the  most  dis- 
tinguished man  of  his  province,  already  known  in 
Europe  for  his  experiments  in  electricity,  dating  ten 
years  back.  The  mission  with  which  he  was  charged, 
and  which  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  his  later 
political  mission  in  1764,  was  wholly  special  and  pro- 
vincial. William  Penn,  the  coloniser  and  legislator  of 
Pennsylvania,  in  the  Charters  and  fundamental  agree- 
ments which  he  had  obtained  from  the  Crown,  or 
had  himself  granted  to  the  immigrant  population,  had 
carefully  stipulated  for  his  own  private  interests  and 
those  of  his  family,  together  with  the  civil  and  re- 
ligious liberties  of  the  colonists.  His  sons,  owners  of 
large  territorial  possessions,  who  were  invested  with 
the  extraordinary  right  of  appointing  the  governors 
of  the  province,  assumed  that  their  estates  were  ex- 
empted from  taxation.  The  Assembly  of  Pennsyl- 
vania opposed  so  flagrant  an  inequality,  and  Franklin 
was  commissioned  by  that  body  to  go  to  England 
and  plead  the  cause  of  the  public  rights  against  the 
sons  of  William  Penn,  by  making  an  appeal  to  the 
officers  of  the  Crown.  The  interest  of  Pennsylvania, 
at  that  time,  was  that  the  Crown  should  intervene 
more  directly  than  it  did  in  colonial  administration, 
and  that  it  should  free  the  province  from  the  species 


Benjamin  ^franklin.  337 

of  petty  feudality  that  entailed  these  profits  on  one 
family. 

During  the  last  years  of  his  stay  in  Philadelphia, 
Franklin  had  become  more  and  more  respected  in 
the  province.  Elected  a  member  of  the  Assembly,  of 
which  he  had  long  been  secretary,  charged,  more- 
over, with  the  organisation  and  management  of  the 
Posts,  he  had  rendered  great  services  to  the  English 
army  in  the  war  with  Canada  (1734).  Interposing 
between  the  Assembly,  not  warlike  because  it  was 
chiefly  composed  of  Quakers,  and  the  English  general, 
he  had  procured  carts  and  provisions,  made  contracts 
with  markets,  in  short,  had  constituted  himself  pur- 
veyor for  the  army,  without  other  motive  than  that 
of  saving  the  province  from  military  exactions,  and 
doing  his  duty  as  a  faithful  subject.  The  disasters 
that  followed  had  not  surprised  him;  knowing  the 
presumptuous  character  or  the  incapacity  of  the  lead- 
ers first  employed  in  the  expedition,  he  had  predicted 
the  result. 

After  his  arrival  in  England,  he  was  consulted  on 
this  war  with  Canada,  and  on  the  means  of  better 
conducting  it.  He  did  not  see  IVlr.  Pitt,  the  prime 
minister,  who  was  then  a  personage  of  great  im- 
portance and  seldom  accessible,  but  he  communicated 
with  his  secretaries,  and  did  not  cease  to  press  upon 
them  the  necessity  and  the  urgency  of  taking  Canada 
from  France;  pointing  out  at  the  same  time  the  ways 
and  means  of  succeeding.    He  even  wrote  a  pamphlet 


VOL    I. 


338  ^Benjamin  jfranftUn. 

on  the  subject.  To  take  and  keep  Canada  was  to 
him  as  favourite  a  thought  as  the  destruction  of  Car- 
thage was  to  Cato;  he  urged  it  not  only  as  a  colonist, 
but  as  an  Englishman  of  Old  England,  ardently  work- 
ing for  the  future  grandeur  of  the  empire.  At  this 
period  of  his  life  Franklin  knew  no  difference  be- 
tween his  two  countries;  he  had  a  consciousness  of 
the  growing  and  illimitable  destinies  of  the  young 
America;  he  saw  it,  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the 
Mississippi,  peopled  within  a  century  by  British  sub- 
jects; but,  if  Canada  remained  French,  this  develop- 
ment of  the  British  Empire  in  America  would  be 
constantly  held  in  check,  and  the  Indian  tribes  would 
find  a  powerful  auxiliary,  always  ready  to  gather  them 
into  confederation,  and  hurl  them  on  the  colonies. 

In  seeing  the  ardour  that  Franklin  puts  into  this 
question,  which  he  considers  national,  we  understand 
how,  fifteen  years  later,  when  the  rupture  came  be- 
tween the  colonies  and  the  mother-country,  he  had 
a  moment  of  keen  anguish,  when,  without  being 
shaken  in  his  determination,  he  shed  tears;  for  he 
had,  in  his  most  virile  years,  himself  contributed  to 
consolidate  England's  grandeur;  and  he  could  say,  in 
his  last  letter  to  Lord  Howe  (July,  1776) : 

"  Long  did  I  endeavour,  with  sincere  and  indefatigable  zeal,  to  pre- 
serve from  all  accident  the  glory  of  that  beautiful  and  noble  porcelain 
vase,  the  British  Empire;  for  I  knew  that,  once  broken,  the  pieces 
could  never  keep  even  a  part  of  the  strength  and  value  they  had  when 
they  formed  a  single  whole,  and  that  a  perfect  reunion  could  hardly 
be  hoped  for  in  coming  years." 


Benjamin  jFranklin.  339 

That  word  "hardly"  [a peine],  which  seems  to 
have  a  slight  gleam  of  hope,  was  in  reality,  at  that 
date,  merely  a  politeness. 

But,  in  1759,  Franklin  was  still  only  an  English- 
man from  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  to  whom  the 
mother-country  did  honour  by  a  distinguished  wel- 
come. In  the  intervals  of  leisure  left  him  by  the 
incidents  and  prolonged  delays  of  his  mission,  he 
cultivated  the  sciences  and  learned  men.  He  visited 
Scotland  in  the  summer  of  1759,  and  there  became 
intimate  with  men  of  the  first  order,  with  whom  that 
country  was  then  well  provided,  forming  an  intel- 
lectual group  of  a  distinct  character,  composed  of  the 
historians  Robertson,  David  Hume,  Ferguson,  etc. : 

"  In  short,  I  must  say,"  wrote  Franklin  on  his  return  from  this  jour- 
ney to  Edinburgh,  "  that  the  six  weei<s  I  have  just  passed  are,  1  think, 
those  of  the  fullest  and  the  most  dense  happiness  I  have  ever  had  at  any 
time  in  my  life.  The  agreeable  and  instructive  society  that  I  found 
there  has  left  so  sweet  an  impression  on  my  memory,  that  if  strong 
ties  did  not  draw  me  elsewhere,  1  think  that  Scotland  would  be  the 
country  1  should  choose  in  which  to  spend  the  rest  of  my  days." 

David  Hume,  writing  to  thank  Franklin  for  sending 
him,  at  his  request,  instructions  as  to  the  making  of 
lightning-rods,  ends  his  letter  thus: 

"  I  am  very  sorry  that  you  think  of  soon  quitting  our  hemisphere. 
America  has  sent  us  many  good  things,  gold,  silver,  sugar,  tobacco, 
indigo,  etc. ;  but  you  are  the  first  philosopher  and  the  first  really  great 
man  of  Letters  whom  we  owe  to  her.  It  is  our  fault  that  we  do  not 
keep  you;  which  proves  that  we  are  not  in  agreement  with  Solomon, 
that  '  wisdom  is  far  above  gold ';  for  we  take  good  care  never  to  send 
back  an  ounce  of  the  metal  when  we  have  once  laid  our  fingers  on  it." 


340  ^Benjamin  jfcanftUn. 

Franklin  wittily  replies  to  this  letter,  in  the  style  of 
an  economist: 

"  Your  compliment  ol  gold  and  wisdom  is  very  kind  to  me,  but  a 
little  unjust  to  your  country.  The  different  value  of  each  thing  in 
different  parts  of  the  world  is  in  proportion,  as  you  know,  to  the  de- 
mand for  it.  They  tell  us  that  in  Solomon's  time  gold  and  silver  were 
in  such  abundance  that  they  had  no  more  value  in  his  land  than  the 
stones  in  the  street.  You  have  here  to-day  precisely  such  an  abund- 
ance of  wisdom.  You  should  not  therefore  blame  your  countrymen 
if  they  do  not  desire  more  than  they  have;  and,  if  1  have  a  little,  it  is 
only  just  that  I  should  take  it  where,  by  reason  of  rarity,  it  will 
probably  find  a  better  market." 

We  can  readily  understand  Franklin's  liking  for 
the  Lettered  world  of  Edinburgh;  he  had  in  him  a 
philosophy  both  penetrating  and  circumspect,  subtle 
and  practical,  and  an  industrious  as  well  as  lofty 
observation.  As  author  of  moral  Essays,  and  also 
as  experimenter  and  man  of  science,  as  a  clear  and 
simple  expositor  of  his  methods  and  his  results,  it 
certainly  seems  as  if  Scotland  were  his  intellectual 
country.  He  wrote  something  on  "  Old  Scotch  Melo- 
dies" and  the  delightful  impression  they  made  upon 
the  soul.  He  tried,  in  a  very  acute  analysis,  much 
as  a  Dugald  Stewart  might  have  done  later,  to  ex- 
plain why  those  old  melodies  are  so  charming.  His 
remarks  on  this  subject  bear  the  stamp  of  that  in- 
genious simplicity  of  thought  which  is  the  sign  of  a 
truly  philosophical  mind.  Nevertheless,  in  the  matter 
of  music,  as  in  all  else,  it  is  evident  that  what  Franklin 
likes  is  simplicity;  he  wants  music  conformed  to  the 


Benjamin  3Franl?lin.  341 

sense  of  the  words  and  the  feeling  expressed,  and  this 
with  as  little  effort  as  possible.  But,  there  is  a  king- 
dom of  Sounds,  as  there  is  one  of  Colour  and  of  Light; 
and  this  magnificent  kingdom  in  which  the  Handels 
and  the  Pergoleses  rise  and  soar,  as  in  the  other  we 
see  the  Titians  and  the  Rubenses  float  and  play,  Frank- 
lin was  not  formed  to  enter;  he  who  invented  and 
perfected  the  harmonica  remained  in  the  principles 
of  elementary  music.  In  nothing  did  he  like  luxury; 
and  in  the  fine  arts  luxury  is  richness  and  talent 
itself. 

In  like  manner,  in  religion,  and  in  the  worship  of 
public  adoration  which  the  peoples  render  to  Divinity, 
there  is,  if  I  may  dare  to  say  so,  a  kingdom  of  Prayer 
and  of  Hymns.  There,  again,  Franklin  tried  to  apply 
his  method.  Taking  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer, 
used  by  Protestants,  he  endeavoured  to  make  it,  accord- 
ing to  his  ideas,  more  reasonable,  more  moral;  and  for 
that  purpose  he  cut  out,  and  corrected  certain  parts; 
he  laid  hands  on  the  Psalms,  he  abridged  David.  He 
who  in  certain  respects  seemed  so  truly  to  feel,  and 
even  imitate  in  a  way,  the  parables  of  the  Gospel,  he 
does  not  feel  nor  understand  fully  either  Job  or  David. 
Their  obscurities  impede  him;  their  words  that  issue 
partly  from  the  clouds  bewilder  him;  he  requires  that 
all  be  comprehensible;  he  levels,  as  best  he  can,  Mount 
Sinai.  And  yet,  the  moment  we  accept,  as  he  had  the 
wisdom  to  do,  public  worship  and  adoration,  are  there 
not  in  the  soul  of  man  emotions,   in  human  destiny 


342  Benjamin  ifcanMltn. 

mysteries  and  depths  which  call  for  and  justify  the 
thunders  of  the  Divine  word  ?  However  that  may  be, 
he  could  not,  and  did  not,  admire  sublime  disorder, 
and  he  did  his  best  to  prevent  the  lightnings  of  Moses 
from  descending  upon  us,  precisely  as  he  had  warded 
off  the  other  lightning  with  his  rods.  Job,  David,  Bos- 
suet,  old  Handel,  and  Milton  go  far  beyond  Franklin, 
and  yet,  leader  and  zealous  introducer  of  the  rival  and 
practical  race,  if  you  let  him  alone  he  will  gently  com- 
pel them  to  reckon  with  him. 

Here  would  be  the  place,  were  I  fitted  for  it,  to 
speak  of  him  as  a  man  of  science,  and  to  mark  his 
position  and,  so  to  speak,  his  level  among  great  men. 
An  excellent  English  critic  (Jeffrey)  dropped  a  word 
on  that  point  in  the  only  direction  in  which  writers 
like  myself  can  approach  it.  Franklin  was  not  a 
geometrician,  he  was  solely  a  physicist,  a  natural 
philosopher;  his  works  in  that  line  have  a  character  of 
simplicity,  of  delicate  and  searching  analysis,  of  easy 
and  decisive  experiments,  of  clear  reasoning  within  the 
mental  compass  of  every  one,  with  luminous,  gradual, 
and  convincing  demonstration.  He  goes  as  far  as  he 
can  with  the  instrument  of  common  language,  and 
without  employing  calculations  and  formulas.  Science 
with  him  is  inventive,  and  he  makes  it  familiar.  "A 
singular  felicity  of  induction,"  said  Sir  Humphry 
Davy,  "guides  all  his  researches,  and  by  very  small 
means  he  establishes  great  truths."  He  did  not  re- 
strain himself  in  conjectures  and  hypotheses  whenever 


Benjamin  ifranftlin.  343 

natural  ones  presented  themselves  to  his  mind;  and  he 
allowed  himself  to  make  very  bold  ones  to  explain  some 
of  the  great  phenomena  of  nature;  but  he  did  so  with- 
out attaching  other  importance  to  them  than  that  which 
could  properly  be  granted  to  speculative  conjectures 
and  theories. 

The  turn  of  his  mind,  however,  always  brought  him 
back  to  the  practical,  and  to  the  use  that  could  be  made 
of  science  for  the  safety  and  comfort  of  life.  Thus  it 
was  that  his  general  discoveries  in  electricity  led  to  the 
invention  of  the  lightning  rod.  He  never,  at  any  time, 
crossed  the  Atlantic  without  devoting  himself  to  ex- 
periments on  the  temperature  of  sea- water,  or  on  the 
swiftness  of  vessels;  experiments  destined  to  be  of  use 
long  after  him  to  future  navigators.  He  hked  above 
all,  and  searched  for,  applications  of  science  for  do- 
mestic use.  While  guaranteeing  buildings  from  light- 
ning, he  invented  for  the  interior  of  houses  convenient, 
economical  chimneys  that  did  not  smoke.  The  scien- 
tific and  learned  man  in  Franklin  always  remembered 
the  handicraftsman,  the  workman,  and  the  industry. 
Man  has  been  defined  in  general  in  many  ways,  of 
which  some  are  regal  and  magnificent;  but  as  for  him, 
he  limited  his  definition  to  that  of  "an  animal  who 
makes  tools." 

He  had  faith  in  experimental  science  and  in  its  dis- 
coveries; he  often  regretted,  towards  the  end  of  his 
life,  that  he  was  not  born  a  century  later,  that  he  might 
have  enjoyed  all  that  would  then  have  been  discovered. 


344  3Benjamin  J'ranl^lin, 

"The  rapid  progress  that  true  science  makes  in  our 
day,"  he  wrote  to  Priestley,  February  8,  1780, 

"  gives  me  sometimes  a  regret  that  I  was  born  so  early,  it  is  im- 
possible to  imagine  the  degree  to  which  the  power  of  man  over  matter 
may  be  carried  in  a  thousand  years.  Possibly  men  will  have  learned 
how  to  disengage  from  great  bodies  their  weight,  and  give  them  an  ab- 
solute lightness  which  will  facilitate  transportation.  Agriculture  may 
diminish  its  toil  and  double  its  product.  All  diseases  may,  by  sure 
means,  be  prevented  or  cured,  without  excepting  even  that  of  old  age, 
and  our  life  might  prolong  itself  at  will  to  greater  length  than  before  the 
Deluge." 

Franklin,  in  speaking  thus,  may  have  smiled  a  little, 
but  it  is  very  certain  that  he  believed  some  of  these 
things  at  heart.  When  he  does  dream  he  has  vast 
horizons,  and  just  such  dazzling  perspectives;  it  is  the 
style  of  illusion  of  many  men  of  science.  One  part  at 
least  of  his  predictions  is  now  on  the  road  to  being 
realised.'  At  the  same  time,  he  has  the  good  sense 
to  regret  that  moral  science  is  not  in  a  parallel  path 
towards  perfection,  and  that  it  makes  but  little  prog- 
ress among  men. 

After  a  stay  of  five  years  in  England,  having  ob- 
tained, if  not  all  the  points  of  his  demand,  at  least  the 
recognition  of  the  essential  principles  for  which  he  had 

'  Written  in  1852,  seventy-three  years  after  Franklin  wrote  to 
Priestley.  What  would  Sainte-Beuve  (not  to  speak  of  Franklin)  say 
now,  fifty-three  years  later,  to  deep-sea  cables,  wireless  telegraphy, 
electricity  lighting  our  houses,  driving  our  carriages,  cooking  our  din- 
ners !  The  spirit  of  Franklin's  predictions  is  more  than  fulfilled,  but 
his  own  works  are  not  obsolete.  The  "  Franklin  stove  " — a  portable 
open  fireplace,  made  of  iron,  in  which  logs  of  wood  are  burned,  as 
on  a  hearth, — are  still  much  used  in  country  regions. — Tr. 


JSenjamln  jfranklin,  345 

come  to  plead  in  the  name  of  his  countrymen,  Frank- 
lin embarked,  at  the  end  of  August,  1762,  for  America. 
At  the  moment  of  setting  foot  on  the  vessel  he  wrote 
to  Lord  Karnes,  a  Scotch  friend  of  his: 

"  1  cannot  leave  this  happy  isle  and  the  friends  1  have  made  here, 
without  extreme  regret,  though  I  go  to  a  country  and  to  a  people 
that  1  love.  I  depart  from  the  old  world  to  the  new,  and  1  fancy 
that  I  feel  somewhat  as  a  man  does  in  passing  from  this  wodd 
to  the  next:  grief  at  departure,  dread  of  the  passage,  hope  in  the 
future." 

Franklin  returns  often  to  this  idea  of  death,  and  al- 
ways in  a  gentle,  almost  smiling  manner.  He  con- 
sidered it  as  a  crossing,  to  be  sailed  in  obscurity 
and  doubt  as  to  its  length;  or  else  as  the  sleep  of  a 
night,  as  natural  and  necessary  to  the  human  consti- 
tution as  the  other  sleep.  "We  shall  rise  fresher  in 
the  morning." 

Reaching  America,  welcomed  by  his  countrymen, 
and  caught  again  into  the  current  of  public  affairs, 
Franklin  often  gives  a  glance  of  remembrance  to  those 
years  in  England,  so  well  employed,  and  where  friend- 
ship and  science  had  been  so  much  to  him.  He  feels 
at  once,  on  arriving  among  his  own  people  in  Phila- 
delphia, the  difference  of  the  two  societies  and  the  two 
cultures.  He  writes  to  Miss  Mary  Stevenson,  his 
charming  and  serious  pupil,  in  whose  family  he  had 
lodged  while  in  London: 

"  Of  all  the  enviable  things  that  England  possesses,  that  which  I 
envy  most  is  its  society.  How  that  little  island  which,  if  compared 
with  America,  is  like  a  stepping-stone  laid  across  a  brook,  scarcely 


346  Benjamin  jFranhlin. 

higher  above  the  water  than  is  needed  to  keep  the  shoe  dry,  how,  I  say, 
does  that  little  island  manage  to  collect,  almost  in  every  neighbourhood, 
more  sensible,  intelligent,  and  elegant  minds  than  we  can  gather 
through  hundreds  of  leagues  of  our  best  forests  ?  " 

He  ends,  however,  by  expressing  a  hope  that  the 
arts,  ever  tending  westward,  would  some  day  cross 
the  great  ocean,  and,  after  they  have  first  provided 
for  the  necessities  of  life,  would  begin  to  think  of  its 
embellishment. 

Franklin,  elected  member  of  the  Assembly  of  Penn- 
sylvania, and  director-general  of  Posts,  passed  more 
than  two  years  in  taking  a  most  active  part  in  local 
affairs.  In  the  Assembly  he  was  leader  of  the  Opposi- 
tion; that  is  to  say,  he  continued  to  speak  for  the  in- 
terests of  the  population  against  the  privileges  of  the 
proprietors,  the  sons  of  Penn,  represented  by  the  gov- 
ernor. He  was  appointed,  in  the  end,  President  of  the 
Assembly.  At  the  same  time  he  paid  attention  to  his 
administration  of  the  Posts,  and  formed  a  military  as- 
sociation to  control  some  serious  disturbances  that 
took  place.  The  dwellers  on  the  frontiers,  often  ex- 
posed to  the  attacks  of  Indians,  and  grown  fanatical 
in  their  desire  for  vengeance,  made  attacks  themselves, 
unexpectedly,  and  exterminated  whole  tribes  of  inof- 
fensive and  friendly  Indians.  Such  summary  execu- 
tions, when  the  idea  of  them  arises  in  America,  (and 
it  does  arise  sometimes)  meet  but  little  hindrance, 
because  of  the  lack  of  an  armed  force.  Franklin  con- 
tributed at  that  time,  with  all  his  ability  and  all  his  en- 


Benjamin  jfranftUn.  347 

ergy,  to  make  up  for  the  powerlessness  of  the  governor. 
He  felt  that  the  weak  side  of  democracy  and  of  the 
form  of  government  that  sprang  from  it  lay  there;  he 
says  it,  again  and  again,  to  the  end  of  his  life  and  after 
America  has  given  herself  her  definitive  Constitution 
(1789):  "  We  have  guarded  ourselves  against  an  evil 
to  which  old  States  are  very  subject,  namely,  the  ex- 
cess of  power  in  governments;  but  our  present  danger 
seems  to  be  the  lack  of  obedience  in  the  governed." 

Finally,  in  the  midst  of  the  political  contests,  already 
very  keen,  which  Franklin  had  to  sustain  in  the  Assem- 
bly and  in  the  elections  of  Philadelphia,  came  the  news 
of  the  famous  Stamp  Act  (1764).  In  drawing  up  that 
bill,  the  English  minister  made  it  very  plain  that  he 
claimed  for  the  British  Parliament  the  right  of  taxing 
the  colonies  at  will,  and  of  imposing  duties  upon 
them  without  their  consent.  In  this  conjuncture 
Franklin  was  again  chosen  by  his  countrymen  to  be 
their  agent  and  organ  to  the  Court  of  London  and  the 
British  ministry.  He  left  Philadelphia,  surrounded  by 
a  cavalcade  of  honour  composed  of  three  hundred  of 
his  fellow-citizens,  who  accompanied  him  to  the  har- 
bour, where,  leaving  behind  him  many  devoted 
friends,  and  also  a  goodly  number  of  political  ene- 
mies, he  embarked  once  more  for  England  (November, 
1764).  He  did  not  foresee  that  he  was  to  stay  there 
ten  years;  which,  with  his  preceding  sojourn,  made 
in  the  end  a  residence  of  not  less  than  fifteen  years. 

Here  the  scene  enlarges,  and  the  subject  takes  a  far 


348  36enjanitn  ifranhlin. 

wider  range.  In  Franklin's  preceding  mission  the 
matter  concerned  little  more  than  a  family  suit  be- 
tween the  colony  and  the  sons  of  the  coloniser.  In 
the  new  mission  the  envoy  of  Pennsylvania  was  soon 
to  become  the  agent  and  charge  d'affaires  of  the 
other  principal  colonies,  and  to  express  in  their  name 
the  prayers  and  complaints  of  a  nation,  very  humble 
at  first  and  very  filial,  but  which  already  feels  its 
strength,  and  is  determined  not  to  give  up  its  rights. 
America,  at  this  date,  was  like  a  robust  adolescent, 
who  is  slow  in  saying  to  himself,  and  even  in  compre- 
hending that  he  desires  to  be  completely  independent: 
instinct,  long  repressed,  whispers  it  to  him,  and  at 
last  the  day  comes  when,  rising  in  the  morning,  he 
suddenly  feels  himself  a  man. 

During  the  ten  years  residence  of  Franklin  in  Eng- 
land, the  question  passed  through  many  phases,  many 
successive  variations,  before  the  final  explosion;  but 
we  can  say,  nevertheless,  that  it  never  went  back- 
ward. There  was  no  moment  when  England  was 
sincerely  inclined  to  yield,  or  the  colonies  to  give 
way.  The  merit  of  Franklin  in  this  long  and  ever- 
memorable  struggle  was  that  he  never  went  beyond 
the  spirit  of  his  countrymen  but,  at  that  great  dis- 
tance, was  able  to  divine  it,  and  serve  it  in  the  exact 
measure  that  was  suitable.  His  perspicacity  must 
have  early  enlightened  him  as  to  the  inevitable  future; 
but,  none  the  less,  he  continued  his  course  to  the 
end,  and,  with  unshaken  patience,  kept  his  footing, 


Benjamin  iFvanftlin.  349 

and  drew  from  the  slightest  circumstances  whatever 
might  conduce  to  peace  and  open  the  way  to  a  settle- 
ment. In  all  that  concerns  him  individually,  three 
principal  facts  stand  forth,  and  show  him  publicly  be- 
fore the  world  with  his  qualities  of  strength,  prudence, 
and  lofty  firmness. 

The  first  of  these  circumstances  was  his  interroga- 
tion before  the  House  of  Commons  in  February,  1766. 
The  new  ministry  of  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham 
seemed  more  mildly  disposed  towards  America  and 
ready  to  give  her  satisfaction  by  repealing  the  Stamp 
Act.  Franklin  was  summoned  before  the  House  to 
answer  any  and  all  questions  that  might  be  put  to 
him,  either  on  this  particular  point  or  on  the  American 
question  in  general,  by  the  present  or  former  minis- 
ters, or  by  any  other  member  of  Parliament.  His 
attitude,  his  self-possession,  the  promptitude  and  pro- 
priety of  his  answers,  his  profound  knowledge  of  the 
subject  and  of  the  political  consequences  it  involved, 
his  intrepidity  in  maintaining  the  rights  of  his  coun- 
trymen, his  expressions  full  of  point  and  character,  all 
contributed  to  make  this  examination  one  of  the  most 
significant  of  historical  acts  and  a  great  prognostic 
verified  by  events: — "  if  the  Stamp  Act  be  rescinded," 
he  was  asked  at  the  close,  "  would  that  induce  the  As- 
semblies of  the  Provinces  to  recognise  the  right  of 
Parliament  to  tax  them,  and  to  annul  their  resolu- 
tions ? "  ''No,"  he  replied,  "  never!  "—"  Is  there  no 
means   of  compelling   them   to  annul  those   resolu- 


35°  IBenjamin  JFranftlin. 

tions  ?  " — "None  that  I  know  of.  They  will  never 
do  so,  unless  constrained  by  force  of  arms." — "Is 
there  no  power  on  earth  that  can  bring  them  to  annul 
them  ?" — "No  power,  however  great  it  be,  can  bring 
those  men  to  change  their  opinions."  With  regard 
to  the  determination  taken  by  the  colonies  not  to 
receive  any  article  of  English  manufacture  until  the 
revocation  of  the  taxes,  he  was  asked:  "In  what 
were  the  Americans  accustomed,  up  this  time,  to 
take  pride  .^" — "In  making  use  of  the  fashions  and 
the  articles  of  English  manufacture." — "And  in  what 
do  they  now  put  that  pride?" — "In  wearing,  and 
wearing-out,  their  old  clothes,  until  they  themselves 
know  how  to  make  new  ones." 

The  second  famous  circumstance  in  which  he  stood 
upon  the  scene  was  very  different  in  character. 
Franklin,  closely  as  he  approached,  in  his  literary  and 
scientific  form  of  mind,  his  friends  of  the  school  of 
Edinburgh,  had  something  in  him  by  which  he  dif- 
fered from  them  notably.  He  had  passionate  convic- 
tions to  such  a  degree  that  the  cold  and  sceptical 
David  Hume  thought  he  discovered  in  him  a  spirit  of 
faction,  almost  bordering  on  fanaticism.  That  means 
simply  that  Franklin  had  a  political  religion  which  he 
believed  in  ardently.  In  the  interests  of  his  cause,  and 
by  an  action  that  had  more  of  the  citizen  than  of  the 
gentleman  in  it,  he  thought  it  his  duty  to  send  to 
friends  in  Boston  confidential  letters,  which  had  been 
placed  in  his  hands  with  some  mystery;  letters  which 


Benjamin  dfranftlin.  351 

proved  that  the  violent  measures  adopted  by  England 
were  advised  by  certain  men  in  America,  especially 
by  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  Hutchinson,  and  by 
the  Lieutenant-governor,  Oliver.  The  effect  of  these 
letters,  which  were  circulated  through  the  country, 
produced  before  the  Assembly  at  Boston,  and  recog- 
nised to  be  in  the  handwriting  of  the  Governor  and 
of  the  Lieutenant-governor,  was  prodigious,  and  led  to 
a  Petition  to  the  King,  transmitted  through  Franklin, 
in  defence  of  which  he  was  summoned  on  a  fixed  day 
(January  29,  1774)  before  the  Privy  Council. 

It  was  there  that  his  enemies  awaited  him;  for  by 
this  time  he  had  many;  passions  on  both  sides  were 
at  their  height.  A  crowd  of  privy  councillors,  who 
seldom  attended,  were  invited  as  if  to  a  fete;  there 
were  not  less  than  thirty-six  present,  besides  a  vast 
audience.  After  a  speech  made  by  Franklin's  lawyer 
in  support  of  the  Petition,  a  speech  that  was  scarcely 
heard  because  the  lawyer  happened  to  be  hoarse  on 
that  day,  the  solictor-general,  Wedderburn,  after- 
wards Earl  of  Londsborough,  rose  to  speak.  Putting 
aside  the  matter  of  the  Petition,  he  turned  upon  Frank- 
lin, who  was  in  no  way  in  question:  for  nearly  an 
hour  he  insulted  him  in  regard  to  the  letters,  declaring 
him  to  be  an  incendiary  setting  fire  and  flame  between 
the  two  countries.  He  mingled  ridicule  and  sarcasm 
in  a  way  to  make  all  the  members  of  the  Council  roar 
with  laughter.  Franklin  sat  unmoved,  received  the 
broadside   without   betraying  the   slightest  emotion, 


352  JSenjamiu  jfranMUn. 

and  retired  silently.  The  next  day  he  was  dismissed 
from  the  office  of  director  of  the  Posts  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, hints  having  been  given  to  him  more  than 
once  to  send  in  his  resignation;  to  which  he  replied 
that  it  was  with  him  "  a  principle  never  to  ask,  never 
to  refuse,  and  never  to  resign  an  office."  In  this  case, 
he  preferred  to  lay  upon  his  adversaries  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  act  by  which  they  struck  him. 

This  scene  before  the  Privy  Council  left  a  deep  im- 
pression upon  Franklin's  soul.  He  took  pleasure  in 
noting  that  one  year,  to  a  day,  from  that  outrage,  on 
the  29th  of  January,  1775,  he  received  a  visit  at  his 
house  in  London  from  Mr.  Pitt,  then  Lord  Chatham, 
who  had  made  a  motion  in  the  House  of  Lords  on 
affairs  in  America:  "The  visit  of  so  great  a  man, 
and  for  an  object  so  important,"  he  says,  "flattered 
my  vanity  not  a  little;  and  this  honour  gave  me  all  the 
more  pleasure  because  it  occurred  one  year,  to  a  day, 
after  the  other  minister  had  taken  such  pains  to  insult 
me  before  the  Privy  Council."  On  the  day  of  the 
affair  before  the  Council  Franklin  was  dressed  in  a 
complete  suit  of  Manchester  velvet.  It  is  related  that 
when  presented  at  the  Court  of  France,  four  years 
later,  during  the  first  solemn  functions  of  his  fortunate 
and  honoured  negotiation,  he  put  on  designedly  the 
same  ceremonial  suit,  to  avenge  it  and  cleanse  it, 
in  some  degree,  from  the  insults  of  Mr.  Wedderburn. 
The  truth  of  this  statement,  which  has  passed  into 
a  sort  of  legend,  has  been  questioned.     I  am  inclined 


JSenjamin  jfranftlin.  353 

to  think  it  true,  and  to  suppose  the  suit  to  be  the  one 
mentioned  by  Mme.  Du  Deffand  in  a  letter  of  March, 
1778:  "Mr.  Franklin  was  presented  to  the  king;  he 
was  accompanied  by  some  twenty  insurgents,  three  or 
four  of  whom  wore  uniforms.  Franklin  wore  a  grey- 
ish velvet  suit,  white  stockings,  his  hair  long,  spec- 
tacles on  his  nose,  and  a  white  hat  under  his  arm." 
It  was  after  one  of  his  decisive  interviews  with  the 
French  ministry,  or  after  this  first  presentation  at 
Court,  that  Franklin  wrote:  "That  suit  is  henceforth 
precious  to  me;  for  I  wore  it  when  so  grossly  insulted 
by  Wedderburn,  and  now,  in  the  same  suit,  I  have 
taken  my  complete  revenge." 

The  third  circumstance  in  which,  as  I  have  said, 
Franklin  made  a  brilliant  appearance  upon  the  scene 
during  his  mission  to  London,  was  the  day  on  which 
Lord  Chatham  made  and  upheld  his  motion  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  February  i,  1775.  Franklin  was 
present  at  the  debate  as  spectator.  A  fresh  and  unex- 
pected insult  was  levelled  at  him  by  one  of  the  speak- 
ers, Lord  Sandwich,  who  denied  that  the  proposition 
could  come  from  an  English  peer,  and 

"  then,"  says  Franklin,  "  turning  to  me  who  was  leaning  on  the  bar, 
he  added  that  he  believed  he  had  before  his  eyes  the  person  who  had 
drawn  it  up,  one  of  the  most  cruel  and  malevolent  enemies  the  coun- 
try had  ever  had.  This  outburst  fixed  the  eyes  of  a  great  number  of 
the  lords  upon  me  ;  but,  as  1  had  no  reason  to  take  it  to  myself,  i  kept 
my  countenance  as  motionless  as  if  my  face  were  made  of  wood." 

When  it  became  Lord  Chatham's  turn  to  reply,  he 
expressed  himself  about  franklin  in  the  words  I  have 

VOL,   I. 23. 


354  Benjamin  jfranfelin. 

already  quoted,  and  so  magnificently  that  the  latter  had 
difficulty,  as  he  owns,  in  keeping  the  same  indifferent 
air  and  wooden  face  with  which  he  had  just  confronted 
insult. 

After  this  stay  often  years  in  London,  and  when  the 
inevitable  rupture  took  place,  Franklin  returned  to 
America  (March,  1775).  Henceforth,  the  "beautiful 
porcelain  vase,"  as  he  called  it,  was  broken,  and  he 
mourned  it.  But  the  man  of  Old  England  no  longer 
existed  in  him.  Hostilities  began,  blood  flowed,  he 
lost  the  last  spark  of  his  affection  for  the  country  of 
his  fathers;  in  his  acts,  in  his  thoughts  we  now  see 
only  the  man  and  the  citizen  of  the  new  continent, 
of  that  young,  emancipated,  vast  empire,  of  whose 
people  he  is  among  the  first  to  sign  its  declaration 
of  independence,  and  to  foretell  its  grandeur,  without 
one  wish  to  look  back  or  to  recede.  The  position 
of  the  United  States  is  critical,  but  the  energetic 
good  sense  of  Franklin  tells  him  that  the  hour  has 
come  for  prudence  itself  to  be  rash. 

Franklin  at  this  date  is  seventy  years  of  age.  After 
more  than  one  year  passed  in  active  labours  and  in  the 
most  fatiguing  missions,  having  been  sent  when  the 
winter  was  scarcely  over  to  rouse  Canada,  if  possible, 
to  insurrrection,  he  is  chosen  to  go  to  the  Court  of 
France  to  negotiate  with  and  strive  to  rally  it  to  the 
support  of  the  American  cause.  He  sailed,  Octo- 
ber, 1776,  on  a  sloop  of  war  (not  neglecting  to  make 
on  the  voyage,   according  to  his  usual  custom,  ob- 


Benjamin  jfranftlin.  355 

servations  on  marine  temperatures),  and  disembarked 
upon  the  coast  of  Brittany  in  the  Bay  of  Quiberon, 
whence  he  made  his  way  by  land  to  Nantes,  arriving 
in  Paris  at  the  end  of  December.  Here  it  is  that,  for 
us,  the  story  of  the  patriarch  of  Passy  begins;  but  we 
could  not  rightly  understand  him  if  we  had  not  seen 
him  as  a  young  man,  and  then  as  a  mature  man,  in 
the  completeness  of  his  character  and  in  some  of  its 
principal  traits. 

When  he  arrived  in  Paris  at  the  end  of  December, 
1776,  his  coming,  which  was  destined  to  become  a 
sojourn  of  eight  and  a  half  years,  was  instantly  made 
the  topic  of  all  conversation.  It  was  not  his  first  visit 
to  France:  he  had  already  spent  some  weeks  in  Paris 
in  1767,  and  again  in  1769.  Of  his  first  journey  he 
gave  an  account  in  a  lively  letter  to  his  young  friend, 
Mary  Stevenson,  in  which  he  remarks  chiefly  upon 
external  matters,  the  roads,  the  politeness  of  the  peo- 
ple, the  manner  of  dressing  the  hair,  the  rouge  worn 
by  women,  the  mixture  of  sumptuousnessand  poverty 
in  the  buildings.  He  had  been  to  Versailles,  he  tells 
her;  he  was  presented  to  the  king;  he  had  seen  him 
eat  his  dinner;  Louis  XV  had  spoken  to  him: 

"  Enough  said  about  all  that,"  he  writes,  jestingly,  stopping  him- 
self as  if  about  to  say  more  ;  "  for  I  would  not  have  you  think  that  I 
was  so  pleased  with  this  king  and  queen  as  to  lessen  the  considera- 
tion I  have  for  ours.  No  Frenchman  can  surpass  me  in  the  idea 
that  my  king  and  queen  are  the  best  in  the  world,  and  the  most 
amiable." 

"  Travelling,"  he  says  in  the  same  letter,  "  is  a  means  of  prolonging 


356  Benjamin  jfranf?Un. 

life.  It  is  scarcely  a  fortnight  since  we  quitted  London,  but  the  va- 
riety of  scenes  we  have  passed  through  makes  that  time  seem  equal 
to  six  months  spent  in  one  place.  I  myself  have  been  subjected  to 
greater  changes  in  my  person  than  !  should  have  made  in  six  years 
at  home.  I  was  not  in  Paris  six  days  before  my  tailor  and  hair- 
dresser had  transformed  me  into  a  French  gentleman.  Only  think 
what  a  figure  1  make  with  a  little  bag  of  hair  behind  and  my  ears  un- 
covered !  They  tell  me  I  have  grown  twenty  years  younger  and  that 
I  have  quite  an  air  of  gallantry.  .   .  ." 

This  Franklin  of  1767,  thus  curled,  powdered,  and 
dressed  like  a  Frenchman,  differed  totally  from  the 
purely  American  Franklin  who  reappeared  in  1776,  to 
ask  for  the  support  of  the  Court  of  France,  in  a  wholly 
republican  suit  and  a  sable-fur  cap,  which  he  kept  on 
his  head.  It  was  thus  that  he  first  appeared  in  the 
salons  of  the  gay  world,  at  Mme.  Du  DefTand's,  beside 
Mmes.  de  Luxembourg  and  de  Boufflers.  "  Picture  to 
yourself,"  he  writes  to  a  friend,  "a  man  as  gay  as 
ever,  as  strong,  as  vigorous,  merely  a  few  years  older; 
very  simply  dressed,  wearing  thin  grey  hair  quite  flat 
and  coming  out  below  my  one  coiffure — a  handsome 
fur  cap,  which  covers  my  forehead  down  almost  to 
my  spectacles."  However,  he  did,  soon  after,  sup- 
press the  fur  cap  and  continued  to  the  last  bare- 
headed, his  hair  very  spare  on  the  crown,  but  falling  on 
both  sides  of  his  head  and  neck  almost  to  the  shoulders; 
in  short,  exactly  such  as  his  portraits  have  fixed  in- 
delibly in  our  memories. 

Franklin  had  long  understood  French;  he  set  himself 
to  study  it  in  1733,  and  could  read  all  books  in  our 
language  very  easily;  but  he  spoke  it  with  difficulty, 


,  ^Benjamin  jfranftUn.  357 

and  this  had  been  an  obstacle  to  his  knowing  more  of 
French  society  during  his  stay  in  Paris  in  1767  and 
1769.  Mme.  Geoffrin,  to  whom  he  had  a  letter  from 
David  Hume,  had  not  been  able  to  initiate  him,  though 
his  arrival  was  much  noticed  by  scientific  men.  We 
find  in  the  "Secret  Memoirs,"  said  to  be  written  by 
Bachaumont,  under  date  of  September,  1767:  "  M. 
Franklin,  that  natural  scientist,  so  remarkable  for  the 
experiments  in  electricity  which  he  has  made  in 
America,  and  brought  to  the  most  surprising  point  of 
perfection,  is  in  Paris,  All  the  scientific  men  are  eager 
to  see  and  to  confer  with  him." 

During  the  first  period  of  his  stay,  beginning  in  1776, 
Franklin  was  compelled  to  conquer  this  difficulty  of 
conversation  and,  in  spite  of  his  advanced  age,  he 
succeeded  by  his  perseverance.  Nevertheless,  a  few 
blunders  on  his  part  are  recorded.  Being  present  one 
day  at  a  session  of  the  Academy,  and  understanding  the 
French  language  but  slightly  when  declaimed,  he  de- 
termined, in  order  to  do  the  civil  thing,  to  applaud 
whenever  he  saw  Mme.  de  Boufflers  give  signs  of  ap- 
probation; but  it  so  happened  that,  without  knowing 
it,  he  applauded,  louder  than  any  one,  the  parts  that 
praised  himself. 

Franklin's  feelings  towards  France  varied  during  his 
long  career,  and  even  during  the  period  of  his  last  so- 
journ; it  is  only  just  to  take  account  of  these  differing 
periods,  lest  we  should  think  him  a  scoffer,  and  un- 
grateful.    A  British  patriot  by  origin,  and  an  American 


358  iBenjamin  ffranhlin. 

of  Old  England,  he  began  by  not  liking  France,  con- 
sidering her  an  enemy,  as  much  as  he  could  so  consider 
a  nation  composed  of  his  fellow-beings.  He  distrusted 
France,  and  during  his  stay  in  London,  when  M.  Du- 
rand,  the  French  minister  plenipotentiary,  showed  him 
esteem  and  tried  to  draw  from  him  information  on  the 
affairs  of  America,  he  held  himself  aloof:  "  1  imagine," 
he  wrote  (August,  1767)  "that  that  intriguing  nation 
would  not  be  sorry  to  meddle  in  our  affairs,  and  to 
blow  the  frd  between  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies; 
but  I  hope  that  we  shall  furnish  her  with  no  such 
opportunity." 

The  opportunity  had  now  come,  the  way  was  open 
ten  years  later,  and  it  was  Franklin  himself  who  came 
to  solicit  our  nation  and  its  king  to  take  part  in  the 
struggle  and  to  profit  by  it.  In  the  early  days  of  his 
sojourn  he  is  sensitive  to  annoyances,  to  absurdities; 
he  finds  himself  the  object  not  only  of  admiration  but 
of  sudden  infatuation,  and  at  first  he  does  not  like  it. 
He  is  besieged  by  solicitations,  by  entreaties  of  all  sorts. 
A  generous  fever  had  taken  possession  of  our  nation; 
men  were  fighting  in  America,  and  every  soldier 
wanted  to  rush  there.  It  was  all  the  rage  to  go  and 
draw  your  sword  for  the  "insurgents,"  as  it  was, 
later,  to  rush  to  California  for  gold.  No  one  would 
believe  that  Franklin  had  not  come  to  solicit,  first  of 
all,  military  assistance  and  engage  officers. 

"  These  demands,"  he  wrote,  "  are  my  perpetual  torment.    .    .    . 
Scarcely  a  day  passes  that  1  have  not  a  number  of  such  visits  of  solici- 


Benjamin  ifranftUn.  359 

tation,  to  say  nothing  of  letters.  They  look  up  all  my  friends  and 
weary  them  to  weary  me.  The  head  functionaries  of  all  ranks  in  all 
departments,  ladies  great  and  small,  not  counting  professional  place- 
hunters,  importune  me  from  morning  until  night.  The  noise  of  each 
carriage  entering  my  courtyard  suffices  to  alarm  me.  1  fear  to  accept 
an  invitation  to  dinner,  so  nearly  sure  1  am  to  meet  some  officer  or  some 
friend  of  an  officer  who,  after  a  glass  or  two  of  champagne  has  put  me 
into  good  humor,  begins  his  attack.  Happily,  in  my  sleep  I  do  not 
dream  of  these  disagreeable  things,  otherwise  I  should  come  to  dread 
what  are  now  my  sole  hours  of  repose.  .  .  .  And  all  those  who  are 
recommended  to  me  are  '  experienced  officers — brave  as  their  swords — 
full  of  courage,  talents  and  zeal '  for  our  cause;  in  a  word,  real  Caesars, 
each  of  whom  would  be  an  inestimable  acquisition  for  America.   .    .   ." 

In  these  first  days  Franklin,  no  doubt,  did  not  rightly 
estimate  the  impulse  that  swept  the  nation  along,  and 
was  presently  to  impel  the  Government  itself  to  a 
course  by  which  America  was  so  greatly  to  profit. 
Little  by  little,  however,  he  becomes  acclimated ;  his 
little  banter  lessens,  the  slight  irony  ceases,  and  after 
a  year  or  two  spent  in  France,  he  is  wholly  conquered 
by  the  general  spirit  of  the  nation: 

"  I  am  charmed,"  he  writes  to  Mr.  J.  Quincy  (April,  1779),  "  with 
what  you  say  of  the  French  politeness  and  civil  manners  shown  by  the 
officers  and  crews  of  the  fleet.  The  French,  in  this  respect,  greatly  sur- 
pass the  English.  I  find  them  the  most  agreeable  nation  in  the  world 
to  live  among.  The  Spaniards  are  thought  to  be  cruel,  the  English 
haughty,  the  Scotch  insolent,  the  Dutch  stingy,  etc.;  but  I  think  that 
the  French  have  no  national  vice  attributed  to  them.  They  have  cer- 
tain frivolities,  but  those  hurt  no  one  except  themselves.  To  dress  the 
hair  so  that  no  man  can  put  a  hat  on  his  head  and  therefore  carries  that 
hat  under  his  arm,  and  to  fill  the  nose  with  snuff,  may  be  called  ab- 
surdities, but  they  are  not  vices;  they  are  merely  the  results  of  the 
tyranny  of  fashion.  In  short,  nothing  is  lacking  in  the  character  of  a 
Frenchman  of  all  that  goes  to  make  a  charming  and  honourable  man. 
He  has  only  a  few  trifles  the  more,  which  we  could  well  do  without." 


36o  3Benjamin  ifranftlim 

When  he  quitted  France,  in  July,  1785,  Franklin 
was  wholly  one  of  us;  he  repaid  us  the  hospitality  he 
had  received  and  for  the  popularity  by  which  he  was 
surrounded,  from  the  first  to  the  last  day,  by  feelings 
of  affection  and  reciprocal  esteem.  We  may  say  of 
him  that  he  was  the  most  French  of  Americans. 

I  insist  upon  this  point  because  to  detach  such  or  such 
a  passage  from  his  letters,  without  distinguishing  the 
times  at  which  they  were  written,  might  lead  us  to 
infer  quite  the  contrary.  In  politics,  1  cannot  follow 
the  progress  of  his  negotiations  in  the  complicated 
circumstances  through  which  he  led  them;  such  an 
analysis  would  require  a  long  chapter.  1  shall  insist 
only  on  this  one  important  point:  Franklin  was  in  no 
way  ungrateful  towards  France.  From  the  moment 
that  the  treaty  of  alliance  was  concluded,  he  had  but 
one  answer  to  all  the  overtures  made  to  him  to  listen 
to  proposals  from  England:  "  We  cannot  negotiate 
without  France."  America  had  been  a  submissive 
daughter  until  the  day  when  she  emancipated  herself 
from  England,  but  in  vain  did  the  latter  secretly  recall 
her  and  endeavour  to  tempt  her  in  underhand  ways; 
America  was  now  a  faithful  spouse.  Such  was  the 
principle  that  Franklin  professed  on  all  occasions, 
public  or  private;  and  it  drew  upon  him  in  America 
the  reputation  of  being  too  French.  But  he  believed, 
contrary  to  his  distinguished  colleagues  (such  as  Mr. 
Adams),  that  Americans  could  not  express  too  openly 
their  feelings  of  gratitude  to  France,  and  to  her  young 


Benjamin  jfranhltn.  361 

and  virtuous  king.  He  wiio  is  not  given  to  the  mis- 
use of  words,  nor  to  exaggeration,  goes  so  far  on  this 
point  as  to  say : 

"If  this  article"  (on  continuing  the  war  conjointly 
with  France,  and  not  making  a  separate  peace)  "  did 
not  exist  in  the  treaty,  an  honourable  American  would 
cut  off  his  right  hand  rather  than  sign  an  agreement 
with  England  which  was  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  such 
an  article." 

At  a  certain  moment  negotiations  were  opened  with 
England  with  the  knowledge  and  consent  of  France; 
France,  on  her  side,  opened  parallel  ones.  Each  of 
the  two  allies  thought  it  wisest  to  seek  to  make  their 
treaties  of  peace  separately;  promising  to  inform  each 
other  before  their  final  conclusion.  Here  alone  we 
have  the  right  to  notice  that  the  American  commis- 
sioners, to  the  number  of  five  or  six,  among  them 
Franklin,  rushed  their  treaty  through  the  last  con- 
ferences, and  did  not  communicate  to  the  French 
minister,  M.  de  Vergennes,  the  preliminary  articles  de- 
cided upon,  though  not  yet  ratified.  M.  de  Vergennes 
complained  to  them  of  this  infraction  of  their  former 
agreement,  and  even  of  the  instructions  they  had  re- 
ceived from  Congress,  and  Franklin  admitted  that  there 
had  been  a  want  of  courtesy.  The  fact  was  that  a 
rather  singular  distrust  felt  by  the  English  negotiators, 
the  cause  of  which  it  would  take  too  long  to  explain 
here,  had  crept  of  late  into  the  minds  of  the  American 
commissioners,  and  had  made  them  disregard  polite- 


362  3Benjamin  jfranWtn. 

ness.  Nothing,  however,  in  the  articles  agreed  upon 
was  of  a  nature  prejudicial  to  France :  all  was  well,  ex- 
cept the  formality  which  had  been  omitted.  Franklin, 
more  French  in  mind  and  inclination  than  his  col- 
leagues, and  suspected  of  being  so,  thought  it  best  not 
to  separate  from  them  on  this  occasion;  and  he  was 
charged  with  the  duty  of  repairing  the  ill-effect  of  this 
irregularity  with  M.  de  Vergennes  and  Louis  XVI.  In 
this  he  seems  to  have  succeeded  almost  completely, 
and,  what  he  was  least  concerned  about,  his  position 
at  the  Court  of  France  and  the  affectionate  consider- 
ation he  enjoyed  from  all,  were  in  no  way  impaired, 

I  hasten  now  to  speak  of  his  philosophical  and  social 
character  which  specially  interests  us  to-day.  Franklin 
had  influence  upon  us;  he  had  more  than  besought  to 
have.  No  one  ever  understood  the  difference  between 
young  and  old  nations,  between  a  virtuous  and  a  cor- 
rupt people  better  than  he.  He  repeated,  many  and 
many  a  time :  "  None  but  a  virtuous  people  are  capa- 
ble of  liberty,  all  others  are  in  need  of  a  master:  revo- 
lutions cannot  take  place  without  danger  when  the 
peoples  have  not  sufficient  virtue."  He  said  it  of 
England;  could  he  have  failed  to  think  it  of  France? 
When,  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  he  heard  of  the 
first  events  of  July,  '89,  he  felt  as  much  distrust  and 
doubt  of  them  as  hope;  the  first  murders,  certain 
"circumstances"  by  which  the  French  Revolution 
was  accompanied  from  the  beginning,  seemed  to  him 
"grievous,  afflicting": — "I  fear,"  he  says,  "that  the 


Benjamin  jfranfelin,  z^z 

voice  of  philosophy  will  have  difficulty  in  making  itself 
heard  through  the  tumult."— "  Purify,  but  not  de- 
stroy "  was  one  of  his  maxims,  and  he  plainly  saw  from 
the  beginning  it  would  not  be  followed  in  France. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  no  doubt  that  during  his  resi- 
dence in  Paris,  he  did,  in  his  privacy  at  Passy,  in- 
fluence many  of  the  eminent  men  who  took  part  soon 
after  in  the  great  Revolutionary  movement;  and  that 
he  contributed  to  give  them  more  confidence  and  bold- 
ness in  their  purposes:— "  Franklin,"  says  Mallet  du 
Pan,  "  said  more  than  once  to  his  pupils  in  Paris  that 
whoso  would  transport  into  the  body  politic  the 
principles  of  primitive  Christianity  would  change  the 
whole  face  of  society."  He  is  one  of  those  who  have 
advanced  with  utmost  conviction  the  doctrine  of 
secularising  Christianity,  and  thus  obtaining,  if  possible, 
good  and  useful  results  upon  earth.  But  to  take 
Christianity  and  drag  it  so  vehemently  in  that  direc- 
tion is  to  alter  and  curtail  that  which  hitherto  has  been 
its  essence,  namely,  abnegation,  the  spirit  of  sacrifice, 
and  patience  founded  on  immortal  expectations.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  the  idea  of  work  and  peace,  which, 
in  spite  of  the  checks  that  it  receives  from  time  to 
time,  seems  destined  to  rule  more  and  more  all  modern 
societies,  owes  much  to  Franklin. 

He  visited  Voltaire  during  the  last  journey  that  the 
latter  made  to  Paris  (February,  1778),  where  he  died. 
The  two  patriarchs  embraced,  and  Franklin  requested 
Voltaire  to  give  his  blessing  to  his  grandson.     It  is 


364  Benjamin  iTranftlfn. 

probable  that  he  knew  but  Httle  of  Voltaire  in  all  his 
works,  and  took  him  merely  for  the  apostle  and  propa- 
gator of  tolerance.  But  such  a  scene,  with  the  sacra- 
mental words  pronounced  by  Voltaire,  "God  and 
Liberty!  "  resounded  far  and  near,  and  spoke  vividly 
to  the  imaginations  of  men. 

I  like  to  believe  that  Franklin,  could  he  have  followed 
his  own  inclinations  solely,  and  chosen  from  among  us 
the  person  of  his  preference  and  his  ideal,  would  rather 
have  embraced  M.  de  Malesherbes,  *'that  great  man," 
as  he  calls  him,  who  came  to  see  him  at  Passy,  and 
who,  renouncing  public  life  and  amusing  himself  with 
great  plantations,  was  anxious  to  obtain  through  him 
the  trees  of  North  America,  not  yet  introduced  into 
France. 

Established  at  Passy  in  a  beautiful  house  with  a 
garden,  enjoying  a  charming  neighbourhood,  Franklin 
usually,  at  least  during  the  first  years  and  before  his 
health  failed,  dined  out  six  days  of  the  seven,  reserv- 
ing Sundays  for  the  Americans,  whom  he  entertained 
at  home.  His  more  especial  friends  were,  among  other 
well-known  personages:  Turgot,  the  good  Due  de  La 
Rochefoucauld,  Lavoisier,  the  society  that  surrounded 
Mme.  Helvetius  at  Auteuil,  the  Abbe  Morellet,  Ca- 
banis,  etc.  He  went  always  once  a  year  to  Moulin- 
Goli,  to  stay  with  M.  Watelet;  and  he  paid  a  certain 
visit  to  Mme.  d'Houdetot  at  Sannois,  the  sentimental 
memory  of  which  has  been  preserved.  But  these  ex- 
cursions were  rare;  for,  independently  of  his  functions 


Benjamin  dfranftlin.  365 

as  minister  and  negotiator,  he  filled  the  offices  of 
"  merchant,  banker,  admiralty  judge,  and  consul." 
His  countrymen  found  it  more  economical  to  use  him, 
without  a  secretary,  in  these  employments;  which 
condemned  him  to  a  very  sedentary  life  during  the 
day.  He  compensated  himself  for  this  drudgery  at 
night,  in  a  friendly  and  familiar  society  for  which  he 
was  so  well  fitted.  He  preferred,  as  a  general  thing, 
to  listen  rather  than  speak;  and  certain  women  of  so- 
ciety could  be  named  who,  having  gone  to  some  salon 
out  of  curiosity  to  meet  him,  complained  of  his  silence. 
He  had  his  times  and  seasons.  These  intervals  were 
followed  by  charming  awakenings.  When  he  talked, 
he  liked  to  go  to  the  end  of  what  he  had  to  say,  with- 
out interruption.  The  play  of  wit,  the  tales  and  fables 
of  which  he  was  prodigal  at  such  times,  have  been  in 
part  preserved  and  depict  him  to  us  with  his  own  pe- 
culiar stamp.  He  had  a  kindly  irony.  One  of  his  most 
charming  correspondents  in  England,  Miss  Georgiana 
Shipley,  to  whom  he  had  sent  his  "Dialogue  with 
Gout  "  and  other  nothings  that  he  amused  himself  in 
writing  and  then  in  printing  himself,  reminded  him  of 
the  delightful  and  serious  hours  she  had  formerly 
passed  in  his  society,  in  which  she  had  "acquired 
such  taste  for  playful  and  reflective  conversation" 
[^pour  la  conversation  badinante  et  reflechie].  Those 
words,  which  she  put  in  French,  give  a  good  idea  of 
Franklin  in  his  ordinary  life. 

Franklin's  Correspondence  during  these  years  is  most 


366  JBenjamtn  dfranhlln. 

agreeable  and  pleasant  reading;  the  perfect  equilib- 
rium, the  justness,  the  absence  of  all  evil  passions,  all 
anger,  the  good  use  he  learns  to  make  of  even  his  ene- 
mies, an  affectionate  feeling  that  mingles  with  his  exact 
appreciation  of  things  and  which  banishes  their  dry- 
ness, a  lofty  sentiment  wherever  such  is  needed,  a  cer- 
tain smiling  air  shed  over  all,  make  these  letters  a  real 
treasury  of  morality  and  wisdom.  Brought  into  com- 
parison with  Voltaire's  Correspondence,  that  of  Franklin 
gives  birth  to  many  thoughts;  all  is  healthy,  honour- 
able, and  as  if  vitalised  by  a  constant  and  lively  se- 
renity; he  called  ill-humour  "  uncleanliness  of  soul." 

More  than  once  he  rises  to  heights;  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  reality  and  ardour  of  his  human  affection 
suggests  to  him  a  species  of  poetry: 

"  I  must  soon  quit  this  scene,"  he  wrote  to  General  Washington 
(March,  1780),"  but  you  may  live  long  enough  to  see  our  country  pro- 
sper, as  it  cannot  fail  to  do,  in  a  rapid  and  astounding  manner,  when 
once  the  war  is  over — like  a  field  of  young  Indian  corn,  that  too  pro- 
longed fine  weather  and  too  much  sun  have  withered  and  discoloured, 
and  which,  in  that  weak  condition,  being  buffeted  by  storms  of  rain 
and  hail  and  lightning  seemed  threatened  with  entire  destruction,  yet, 
when  the  tempest  had  passed,  it  recovers  its  fresh  verdure,  lifts  its  head 
with  new  vigour,  and  rejoices  the  eyes,  not  of  its  possessor  only,  but 
of  all  who  pass  that  way." 

Is  not  that  a  comparison  which,  by  the  sweetness  of 
its  inspiration  and  the  breadth  of  its  imagery,  recalls 
the  Homeric  comparisons  of  the  Odyssey  ?     Franklin, 
when  old,   read  the  poets  very  little;  one  of  them, 
however,  by  his  nature,  his  simple  grace,  the  recti- 


JSenjamin  jfranhlln,  367 

tude  of  his  sentiment,  found  the  way  to  his  heart:  this 
was  William  Cooper,  the  humble  poet  of  moral  life 
and  reality.  The  noblest  eulogy  that  could  be  made 
of  that  poet — of  whom  we  have  not  the  counterpart  in 
our  literature — was  written  by  Franklin  in  a  few 
lines. 

While  Franklin  was  thus  corresponding  with  friends 
in  America  and  in  England  and  with  his  absent 
daughter,  regretting  the  joys  of  his  family  hearth,  but 
anticipating  for  his  country  great  prospects  for  the 
future,  he  was  popular  in  France  :  he  was,  in  fact,  the 
fashion.  His  portrait  in  medallions,  in  busts,  and  en- 
gravings was  seen  everywhere;  it  was  worn  in  rings 
and  bracelets,  on  canes  and  snuff-boxes.  Beneath  the 
engraved  portraits  were  the  famous  lines  addressed  to 
him  by  Turgot: 

*'  Eripuit  coelo  fulmen,  sceptrumque  tyrannis." 
("From  heaven  he  took  the  lightning,  and  the  sceptre  from  tyrants.") 

Franklin  blushed  at  these  lines,  and  he  blushed  sin- 
cerely; he  would  greatly  have  preferred  that  what  he 
considered  "extravagant"  praise  of  him  should  be 
suppressed,  for  it  did,  in  fact,  exaggerate  his  role. 
But  he  had  to  do  with  a  monarchical  nation  which 
likes  above  all  things  that  some  one  person  shall  be  held 
to  do  everything,  and  which  needs  to  personify  its 
admiration  in  a  single  name  and  a  single  glory.'     In 

'  Strange  that  Sainte-Beuve  should  give  this  reason  ;  it  would  seem, 
rather,  that  in  the  tumult  of  French  souls  conscious  that  some  change 


368  Benjamin  jfranF?Un. 

sending  this  portrait  to  his  friends  in  America,  he 
called  attention,  by  way  of  excuse,  to  the  marked 
characteristic  of  the  French  nation  of  carrying  eulogy 
to  extremes,  so  that  ordinary,  simple  praise  becomes 
almost  censure,  while  excessive  praise,  in  turn,  ends  by 
being  without  significance.  To  a  M.  Nogaret,  an  in- 
defatigable rhymester  now  totally  forgotten,  who  asked 
his  advice  on  a  translation  into  French  of  Turgot's  line, 
Franklin  replied  with  much  frankness: 

Paris,  8  March,  1781. 
"  Monsieur: 

"  I  have  received  the  letter  you  did  me  the  honour  to  vi'rite  to 
me  on  the  2'"'  of  this  month,  in  which,  after  overwhelming  me  with 
a  deluge  of  compliments  which  I  can  never  hope  to  deserve,  you  ask 
my  advice  on  your  translation  of  a  Latin  line  that  has  been  applied  to 
me.  if  1  were,  what  1  really  am  not,  sufficiently  conversant  with  your 
excellent  language  to  be  a  competent  judge  of  its  poesy,  the  idea  that 
I  am  the  subject  of  it  would  prevent  me  from  expressing  any  opinion. 
I  content  myself  with  saying  that  it  attributes  far  too  much  to  me,  par- 
ticularly in  the  part  relating  to  tyrants.  The  Revolution  has  been  the 
work  of  a  great  number  of  brave  and  capable  men,  and  it  is  fully 
honour  enough  for  me  if  I  am  granted  a  small  part  in  it." 

All  that  he  says  on  this  subject  in  his  letters  (and  he 
recurs  to  it  at  various  times)  is  of  pure  good  sense,  in 
a  tone  more  dignified  than  scornful,  and  without  false 
modesty.  Franklin  is  one  of  those  men  who,  while 
honouring  humanity  and  liking  to  look  upward  to- 
ward heaven,  has  no  aspiration  to  be  taken  for  an 
angel. 

must  come  to  their  nation  and  yearning  for  it,  they  clung  with  a  species 
of  infatuation  to  the  man  who  personified  to  them  a  successful  revolu- 
tion on  the  highest  plane — where,  alas  for  the  world!  they  did  not 
follow. — Tr. 


Benjamin  ifranhUn.  369 

Extracts  from  his  "  Private  Journal "  are  often  quoted 
in  relation  to  schemes,  more  or  less  fantastic  and  chi- 
merical, that  were  communicated  to  him  as  a  common 
meeting-point,  by  inventors  of  projects,  machines, 
systems,  or  constitutions.  All  the  fools  and  all  the 
dreamers  seem  to  have  set  one  another  on  to  make 
this  sensible  man,  coming  from  afar,  their  confidant 
and  judge.  Among  those  who  submitted  to  him  their 
ideas  or  their  works,  there  came  one  day  a  certain  un- 
known natural  philosopher  who  was  no  other  than 
Marat.  On  another  occasion,  an  author,  whose  name 
is  not  given,  but  who  is  thought  to  have  been  Thomas 
Paine,  sent  him  the  manuscript  of  an  irreligious  work: 
suppose,  if  you  prefer  to  do  so,  that  this  author, 
about  whom  there  is  uncertainty,  was  a  Frenchman,  a 
philosopher,  a  pupil  of  the  school  of  Holbach,  or  even 
of  that  of  Auteuil — Volney,  for  instance,  submitting  to 
Franklin  the  manuscript  of  his  Ruines.  Franklin  re- 
plies by  a  letter,  which  I  shall  give  entire,  because  it 
expresses  better  than  anything  I  could  say  the  true  re- 
lation in  which  he  stands  with  the  philosophers  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  the  point  at  which  he  separ- 
ates from  them : 

"  I  have  read  your  manuscript  with  some  attention.  By  the  argument 
it  contains  against  a  special  Providence, — though  you  grant  a  general 
Providence, — you  sap  the  foundations  of  all  religion:  because,  without 
the  belief  in  a  Providence  who  knows,  watches,  and  guides,  and  can 
favour  some  in  particular,  there  is  no  motive  for  worshipping  a  Divin- 
ity, for  fearing  to  displease  him,  or  imploring  his  protection.  I  shall 
not  enter  into  any  discussion  of  your  principles,  although  you  seem  to 

VOL.  I. — 24. 


370  Benjamin  jfranhUn, 

desire  it.  I  shall  merely,  for  the  moment,  give  you  my  opinion, 
which  is  that,  although  your  arguments  are  subtle  and  may  prevail 
with  certain  readers,  you  will  never  succeed  in  changing  the  general 
sentiments  of  humanity  on  this  subject;  and  if  you  print  that  work  the 
consequences  will  be  much  odium  heaped  upon  yourself,  great  injury 
to  you  and  no  benefit  to  others.  He  who  spits  against  the  wind  spits 
in  his  own  face.  But,  supposing  you  succeed,  do  you  imagine  that  any 
good  will  result  ?  You  may,  yourself,  find  it  easy  to  live  a  virtuous 
life,  without  the  help  given  by  religion,  you  who  have  a  clear  percep- 
tion of  the  advantages  of  virtue  and  the  disadvantages  of  vice,  and  who 
possess  sufficient  strength  of  resolution  to  make  you  capable  of  resist- 
ing all  common  temptations.  But  consider  how  numerous  is  that  por- 
tion of  humanity  which  is  composed  of  weak  and  ignorant  men 
and  women,  of  the  inexperienced  and  thoughtless  youth  of  both 
sexes,  who  have  need  of  the  motives  of  religion  to  turn  them  from 
vice,  to  encourage  them  to  virtue  and  retain  them  in  the  practice  of  it 
until  it  becomes  habitual — which  is  the  great  guarantee  of  safety. 
Perhaps  you  yourself  owe  to  it  originally — i  mean  to  your  religious 
education — the  habits  of  virtue  of  which  you  now  justly  boast. 

"  You  could  easily  display  your  excellent  talents  for  reasoning  on  a 
less  hazardous  subject,  and  by  so  doing  obtain  a  rank  among  our  most 
distinguished  authors:  for,  among  us,  it  is  not  necessary,  as  it  is 
among  the  Hottentots,  that  a  young  man  in  order  to  be  admitted  into 
the  company  of  men  should  give  proofs  of  his  virility  by  beating  his 
mother.  1  advise  you,  therefore,  not  to  try  to  unchain  the  tiger,  but  to 
burn  this  writing  before  it  is  read  by  any  one  else.  In  that  way,  you 
will  spare  yourself  much  mortification  from  the  enemies  you  will 
create,  and  also,  perhaps,  much  regret  and  repentence.  If  men  are 
wicked  with  religion  what  would  they  be  without  it  ?  This  letter,  as 
I  think,  is  a  proof  of  my  friendship;  I  will  therefore  add  no  other  pro- 
testation, but  sign  myself  simply :  wholly  yours." 

Among  the  philosophers  of  renown  in  the  eight- 
eenth century,  I  see  none  but  Montesquieu  who 
would  have  thought  thus;  but  Franklin  expresses 
it  in  a  manner  more  affectionate,  more  emotional, 
more  paternal,  than  Montesquieu  would  have  done. 

If  all  those  who  conversed  with  Franklin  at  Passy 


Benjamin  ^Franklin.  371 

had  truly  understood  his  precepts  and  his  measures, 
they  would  have  thought  twice  before  undertaking  in 
the  Old  World  a  universal  recasting.  At  the  same 
time,  I  must  add  (even  if  some  contradiction  be  found 
in  it)  that  it  was  difficult  for  those  who  listened  to  him 
not  to  take  fire,  not  to  be  tempted  to  reform  society 
radically;  for  he  was  himself,  in  his  general  way  of 
thinking  and  presenting  matters,  a  great,  too  great  a 
simplifier.  This  practical  man  had  nothing  in  him 
that  discouraged  a  Utopia;  on  the  contrary,  he  rather 
invited  it  by  the  novelties  and  facilities  of  the  outlook 
he  opened  towards  the  future.  He  gave,  in  talking,  a 
desire  to  apply  his  ideas,  but  he  did  not  give  in  equal 
measure  to  those  who  listened  to  him  (the  Condorcets 
and  the  Chamforts,  for  instance,)  his  temperament,  his 
discretion  in  details,  and  his  prudence. 

A  witty  critic  has  very  well  defined  him  as  the 
"godfather  of  a  future  society";  but  1  do  not  know 
how  that  same  critic  could  have  found  means  to  join 
the  name  of  M.  de  Talleyrand  with  that  of  Franklin: 
those  two  names  must  swear  at  seeing  themselves 
thus  associated!  Franklin,  in  the  midst  of  his  shrewd- 
ness and  ability,  is  always  upright  and  sincere.  Lord 
Shelburne  had  sent  his  son,  Lord  Fitzmaurice,  to  see 
him;  after  the  young  man's  second  visit,  Franklin 
writes  in  his  Journal  (July  27,  1784): 

"  Lord  Fitzmaurice  came  to  see  me.  His  father  having  asked  me  to 
give  him  such  advice  as  I  thought  might  be  useful  to  him,  I  took 
occasion  to  tell  him  the  old  story  of  Demosthenes  replying  to  the  man 


372  Benjamin  jfranklin. 

who  asked  him  what  was  the  first  essential  in  oratory?  'Action.' 
— And  the  second?  '  Action.' — And  the  third?  '  Action.'  I  told 
him  that  had  usually  been  interpreted  as  meaning  the  action  of  an  ora- 
tor, his  gestures  in  speaking;  but  that  I  thought  there  was  another  form 
of  action  more  important  for  an  orator  who  wanted  to  persuade  people 
to  follow  his  advice,  and  that  was  a  consistency  and  a  deportment  in 
the  conduct  of  life  which  should  impress  on  others  an  idea  of  his  in- 
tegrity as  well  as  of  his  talents;  and  I  added  that  that  opinion  once 
established,  all  difficulties,  delays,  oppositions,  which  ordinarily  have 
their  cause  in  doubts  and  suspicions,  would  be  forestalled;  and  that 
such  a  man,  though  he  might  be  a  very  second-rate  orator,  would 
nearly  always  obtain  the  advantage  over  the  most  brilliant  orator  who 
had  not  the  reputation  of  sincerity.     .     .     ." 

This  was  all  the  more  appropriate  to  the  young  man 
because  his  father,  Lord  Shelburne,  gifted  with  many 
talents,  had  the  reputation  of  being  the  very  opposite 
of  sincere.  In  all  things,  Franklin  wanted  first  the 
essential,  the  base,  the  foundation,  convinced  that 
that  foundation  would  be  made  manifest  and  that 
the  solid  respect  due  to  it  must  bear  fruit. 

After  a  stay  of  eight  years  in  France  he  returned  to 
America,  being  then  seventy-nine  years  of  age.  Suf- 
fering from  calculus,  he  could  not  bear  the  motion  of  a 
carriage ;  a  litter  of  Queen  Marie  Antoinette,  drawn 
by  Spanish  mules,  took  him  from  Passy  to  the  port  of 
Havre,  where  he  embarked.  He  lived  five  years 
longer,  in  Philadelphia,  and  died  on  the  17th  of  April, 
1790,  at  eighty-four  years  of  age.  His  return  to  his 
country,  the  honours  he  there  received,  the  slight  vex- 
ations (for  such  there  are  in  every  life)  that  he  bore 
without  showing  them,  his  domestic  happiness  in  his 
garden,  under  the  shade  of  his  mulberry  trees,  beside 


Benjamin  jfranhlin.  373 

his  daughter,  with  his  six  grandchildren  playing  at  his 
knee,  his  thoughts  more  and  more  religious  as  years 
advanced  upon  him — all  these  things  make  the  most 
beautiful  and  perfect  end  and  crown  of  old  age  that  the 
mind  can  imagine.  His  Correspondence  in  these  years 
does  not  cease  to  be  interesting  and  lively;  it  is  fed  to 
the  last  by  the  same  sentiments.  Among  various  pas- 
sages I  have  selected  the  following  as  well  expressing 
that  mixture  of  serenity  and  gentle  irony,  of  human 
experience  and  hope,  which  formed  his  habitual  char- 
acter. It  is  from  a  letter  addressed  to  his  old  friend, 
Mary  Stevenson,  now  become  Mrs.  Hewson: 


"  I  have  found,"  he  writes  from  Philadelphia,  May  6,  1786,  "  my 
family  in  good  health,  in  good  condition  as  to  fortune,  and  respected  by 
their  fellow-citizens.  The  companions  of  my  youth  are  in  truth, 
nearly  all  gone  ;  but  1  find  an  agreeable  society  among  their  children 
and  grand-children.  1  have  enough  public  affairs  on  hand  to  keep  me 
from  ennui,  and  with  them  private  amusements,  such  as  conversation, 
books,  my  garden,  and  cribbage.  Reflecting  that  our  market  is  as 
abundantly  supplied  as  the  best  of  private  vegetable  gardens,  1  am 
in  process  of  transforming  mine,  in  the  middle  of  which  stands  the 
house,  into  lawns  and  gravel  walks,  with  trees  and  flowering  shrubs. 
Sometimes  we  play  at  cards  in  the  long  winter  evenings,  but  just  as 
one  plays  chess,  not  for  money,  but  for  the  honour  or  pleasure  of 
battling  with  one  another.  This  will  not  seem  a  novelty  to  you,  for 
you  will  remember  how  we  played  together  in  this  way  during  that 
winter  at  Passy.  It  is  true  that  1  have,  now  and  then,  little  twinges 
of  remorse  in  reflecting  that  1  lose  time  so  idly;  but  another  reflection 
comes  to  comfort  me  and  murmurs  in  my  ear:  '  Thou  knowest  that 
the  soul  is  immortal :  why  then  art  thou  niggardly  in  this  matter  of  a 
trifle  of  time  ?  hast  thou  not  a  whole  eternity  before  thee  ?  '  So,  being 
easily  convinced  and,  like  many  other  reasonable  beings,  satisfied 
with  a  small  reason  when  it  is  in  favour  of  my  desire,  1  shuffle  the 
cards  and  begin  a  new  game." 


374  JSenjamin  jfranftlin. 

Letting  his  thoughts  dwell  on  the  hopes  and  fears, 
the  many  and  diverse  chances  of  happiness  or  misfor- 
tune which  brighten  or  temper  family  joys,  he  says, 
elsewhere,  quoting  the  words  of  a  religious  poet.  Dr. 
Watts  : 

"  He  who  brings  up  a  numerous  family,  so  long  as  he  is  there,  liv- 
ing, to  look  after  it,  offers  himself,  it  is  true,  as  a  '  target  for  grief '  ; 
but  also  he  has  greater  opportunity  for  pleasure.  When  we  launch 
upon  the  Ocean  our  little  flotilla,  bound  and  freighted  for  different 
ports,  we  hope  for  each  vessel  a  lucky  voyage;  but  contrary  winds, 
hidden  sand-banks,  tempests,  and  enemies  have  a  share  in  the  disposi- 
tion of  events  ;  and  although  there  may  result  a  mixture  of  mistakes 
and  disappointments,  nevertheless,  considering  the  risks  on  which  we 
can  have  no  insurance,  we  ought  to  esteem  ourselves  happy  if  some  of 
our  ventures  return  to  port." 

His  ideas  of  death  had  never  varied  for  many  years, 
and  his  hope  became  more  vivid,  more  keenly  felt,  as 
he  approached  his  end.  He  considered  death  a  second 
birth:  "  This  life  is  an  embryonic  state,  a  preparation 
for  life.  A  man  is  not  wholly  born  until  he  has  passed 
through  death."  The  peaceful  end  of  his  old  friends 
who  had  lived  righteous  lives  seemed  to  him  a  fore- 
taste of  the  happiness  of  another  life.  The  recent  dis- 
courses of  Herschel  appeared,  he  thought,  to  call  us  to 
a  future  and  sublime  voyage  of  celestial  discovery 
through  the  spheres. 

By  taking  him  away  at  that  date  and  thus  sparing 
him  two  or  three  more  years  upon  earth.  Providence 
saved  him  from  the  horror  of  seeing  those  he  had  best 
known  and  loved  during  his  stay  in  France  put  to  a 


Benjamin  ifranftlin,  375 

violent  death — the  good  Due  de  La  Rochefoucauld, 
Lavoisier,  his  neighbour  at  Passy,  Le  Veillard,  and  so 
many  others  all  guillotined  or  massacred  in  the  name 
of  principles  he  had  so  long  approved  and  cherished, 
Franklin's  last  thoughts  would  then  have  been  dark- 
ened by  a  funeral  veil,  and  his  serene  soul,  before  the 
rebirth  he  hoped  for,  would  have  known  in  one  day 
all  bitterness. 


flDabame  (Bcotfrim 


377 


flDaC)ame  Ocoffrin. 

AFTER  all  that  I  have  said  of  the  women  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  I  should  leave  too  great 
a  gap  if  I  did  not  speak  of  Mme.  Geoffrin, 
one  of  the  most  celebrated,  and  whose  influence  was 
of  the  greatest.  Mme.  Geoffrin  wrote  nothing  that  has 
been  published  except  four  or  five  letters;  a  quantity 
of  her  sayings  both  apt  and  piquant  have  been  quoted; 
but  they  would  not  suffice  to  keep  her  memory  alive. 
That  which  characterises  her  particularly  and  causes 
her  to  be  remembered  by  posterity,  is  her  salon,  the 
most  complete,  the  best  organised,  and,  if  I  may  say 
so,  the  best  governed  salon  of  her  day,  the  best  estab- 
lished that  there  has  been  in  France  since  the  founding 
of  salons;  that  is  to  say,  since  the  hotel  Rambouillet. 
The  salon  of  Mme.  Geoffrin  was  one  of  the  institutions 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

There  are  persons  who  doubtless  imagine  that  it 
suffices  to  be  rich,  to  have  a  good  cook,  a  comfort- 
able house  in  a  good  quarter,  a  great  desire  to  see 
society  and  much  affability  in  receiving  it  to  make 
for  themselves  a  salon.  They  succeed  only  in  gather- 
ing a  crowd  pell-mell,  in  filling  their  salon,   not  in 

379 


38o  ^a^ame  6eotErin. 

creating  it;  and  if  they  are  very  rich,  very  active, 
much  impelled  by  the  sort  of  ambition  that  desires 
to  shine,  and  are  at  the  same  time  well  informed 
as  to  the  list  of  invitations  to  issue,  and  determined, 
at  any  cost,  to  receive  in  their  houses  the  kings  or 
queens  of  the  season,  they  may  obtain  the  glory 
which  a  few  Americans  obtain  every  winter  in  Paris: 
they  can  have  brilliant  routs  to  which  people  rush 
and  pass  on,  and  forget  the  winter  after.  What 
a  distance  between  this  process  of  invasion  and  the 
art  of  real  establishment!  That  art  was  never  better 
understood  or  practised  than  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, in  the  bosom  of  that  peaceful,  regular  society ; 
and  no  one  carried  it  farther  along,  conceived  it  on  a 
grander  scale,  or  applied  it  with  greater  perfection 
and  finish  of  detail  than  Mme.  Geoffrin.  A  Roman 
cardinal  would  not  have  put  into  it  more  diplomacy, 
more  subtle  and  gentle  skill  than  she  bestowed  upon 
it  for  thirty  years.  In  studying  it  closely  we  are 
more  than  ever  convinced  that  there  is  always  a 
reason  for  a  great  social  influence;  and  that  under 
these  famous  powers  which  are  summed  up  for  us  in 
a  single  name,  there  was  much  toil,  much  study  and 
much  talent;  in  the  present  case  of  Mme.  Geoffrin,  we 
must  add,  much  good  sense. 

Mme.  Geoffrin  appears  from  the  first  as  an  old 
woman;  her  youth  disappears  in  afar  distance  that  we 
do  not  seek  to  penetrate.  Bourgeoise,  and  very  bour- 
geoise  by  birth,    born   in   Paris   in  the   last  year  of 


MADAME  QEOFFRIN. 
After  the  painting  by  G.  StaaL 


/IDa^ame  (Beottdn.  381 

the  seventeenth  century,  Marie-Therese  Rodet  was 
married,  July  19,  17 13,  when  fourteen  years  old,  to 
Pierre-Frangois  Geoffrin,  a  substantial  citizen,  a  lieu- 
tenant-colonel of  the  National  Guard  of  those  days,  and 
one  of  the  founders  of  the  Manufactory  of  looking- 
glasses.  A  letter  of  Montesquieu,  written  in  1748, 
shows  us  Mme.  Geoffrin  at  that  date,  assembling 
choice  company  at  her  house,  and  already  the  centre 
of  a  circle  which  for  twenty-five  years  was  to  last 
and  increase.  Whence  came  this  person  so  distin- 
guished and  so  skilful,  who,  by  her  birth  and  position 
in  the  world,  did  not  seem  destined  for  the  part  she 
played  ?  What  was  her  early  education  ?  The  Em- 
press of  Russia,  Catherine  II,  having  put  this  question 
to  Mme.  Geoffrin  herself,  received  in  reply  a  letter 
which  ought  to  be  added  to  all  that  Montaigne  has 
said  on  education: 

"  I  lost,"  she  says,  "  my  father  and  mother  when  in  my  cradle,  i 
was  brought  up  by  an  old  grandmother  who  had  much  intelligence 
and  a  sound  head.  She  had  very  little  education;  but  her  mind  was 
so  bright,  so  adroit,  so  active,  that  it  never  failed  her;  it  took  the 
place  of  knowledge.  She  talked  so  agreeably  of  things  she  knew 
nothing  about,  that  no  one  wished  her  to  know  more;  and  when  her 
ignorance  became  too  visible,  she  got  away  from  it  by  jests  that  dis- 
concerted the  pedants  who  had  tried  to  humiliate  her.  She  was  so  con- 
tent with  her  lot  that  she  considered  knowledge  a  very  useless  thing  for 
a  woman.  She  used  to  say:  '  1  have  done  so  well  without  it,  that  I 
have  never  felt  the  need  of  it.  If  my  grand-daughter  is  stupid  know- 
ledge will  make  her  self-conceited  and  intolerable;  if  she  has  intelli- 
gence and  sensibility  she  will  do  as  I  have  done:  she  will  make  up  by 
cleverness  and  feeling  for  what  she  does  not  know;  and  when  she 
comes  to  have  more  reason  she  will  learn  that  for  which  she  has  the 
most  aptitude,  and  learn  it  quickly.'    So,  in  my  childhood,  she  had  me 


382  /IDa^ame  Oeottrin. 

taught  simply  to  read;  but  she  made  me  read  a  great  deal;  she  taught 
me  to  think  and  to  reason;  she  taught  me  to  know  men,  making  me 
say  what  I  thought,  and  telling  me  the  judgment  she  formed  upon 
them.  She  obliged  me  to  give  her  an  account  of  all  my  impulses  and 
all  my  feelings;  and  these  she  conected  with  such  gentleness  and 
grace  that  I  never  hid  anything  of  what  I  thought  and  felt  from  her  ; 
my  interior  was  as  visible  to  her  as  my  exterior.  My  education  was 
continual.     .     .     ." 


I  said  that  Mme.  Geoffrin  was  born  in  Paris:  she 
never  left  it  but  once,  in  1766,  when  sixty-seven  years 
old,  to  make  her  famous  journey  to  Warsaw.  More- 
over, she  never  quitted  her  own  quarter;  even  when 
she  drove  into  the  country  to  visit  a  friend,  she  always 
came  back  at  night  and  never  slept  away  from  home. 
She  was  of  the  opinion  that  "there  is  no  better  air 
than  that  of  Paris";  and  wherever  she  might  have 
gone  she  would  always  have  preferred  her  gutter  of 
the  rue  Saint-Honore,  as  Mme.  de  Stael  preferred  hers 
of  the  rue  du  Bac.  Mme.  Geoffrin  adds  one  more 
name  to  the  list  of  Parisian  spirits  who  have  been  en- 
dowed in  the  highest  degree  with  the  social  and 
affable  virtues,  and  who  are  thus  so  easily  civilisers. 

Her  husband  seems  to  have  counted  for  little  in  her 
life,  except  to  provide  her  with  the  fortune  which  was 
the  starting-point  and  the  first  instrumentality  of  the 
consideration  she  was  fitted  to  acquire.  M.  Geoffrin 
is  represented  to  us  as  old,  and  silently  present  at  the 
dinners  that  were  given  in  his  house  to  men  of  Letters 
and  of  science.  They  tried,  so  the  story  goes,  to 
make  him  read  some  book  of  history,  or  of  travels; 


/iDaDame  Oeoffrln*  383 

but  as  he  always  took  up  the  first  volume  without 
perceiving  that  there  were  others,  he  contented  him- 
self by  saying  that  "  the  work  was  interesting,  but  the 
author  repeated  himself  a  little. "  It  is  told  that  reading 
a  volume  of  the  Encyclopaedia  (or  of  Bayle),  which 
was  printed  in  two  volumes,  he  read  across  the  page 
from  one  column  to  the  other,  which  caused  him  to 
say  that  "  while  he  thought  the  work  very  able,  it 
seemed  to  him  a  little  abstruse."  These,  however,  are 
tales  readily  told  of  the  effaced  husband  of  a  celebrated 
wife.  One  day,  a  foreigner  asked  Mme.  Geoffrin 
what  had  become  of  the  old  gentleman  who  used  al- 
ways to  be  at  her  dinners  and  whom  he  no  longer  saw 
there.  Mme.  Geoffrin  replied:  "That  was  my  hus- 
band; he  is  dead." 

Mme.  Geoffrin  had  one  daughter,  who  became  the 
Marquise  de  La  Ferte-Imbault,  an  excellent  woman,  it 
was  said,  but  without  the  moderation,  good  sense, 
and  perfect  decorum  of  her  mother,  who  used  to  say: 
"When  1  consider  her  I  feel  like  a  hen  which  has 
hatched  out  a  duckling." 

Mme.  Geoffrin,  therefore,  derived  her  training  from 
her  grandmother,  but  she  seems  to  me  the  only  one 
of  her  race.  Her  talent,  like  all  true  talent,  was  wholly 
personal.  Mme.  Suard  represents  her  as  gently  im- 
posing respect  "by  her  tall  figure,  her  silvery  hair 
covered  with  a  head-dress  tied  under  the  chin,  her 
dress,  very  noble  and  decent,  and  her  air  of  good  judg- 
ment mingled  with  kindness."     Diderot,   who  had 


384  /ftaDame  0eoCCrin, 

just  been  playing  a  game  of  piquet  witli  her  at  Grand- 
val,  Baron  d'HoIbach's  place,  where  she  was  dining 
(1760),  wrote  to  a  friend: 

"  Madame  Geoffrin  appeared  very  well.  I  have  always  observed 
the  noble  and  simple  taste  with  which  that  woman  dresses  :  to-day, 
she  wore  a  simple  material,  austere  in  colour,  wide  sleeves,  linen  of  the 
finest  and  smoothest,  and  everywhere  the  utmost  cleanliness." 

She  was  then  sixty  -  one  years  old.  This  old 
woman's  attire,  so  exquisite  in  its  modesty  and  sim- 
plicity, was  peculiar  to  her,  and  recalls,  in  a  way,  the 
similar  art  of  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  But  Mme.  Geoffrin 
was  not  obliged  to  husband  or  repair  the  remains  of  a 
beauty  that  still  shone  by  flashes  in  a  half-light;  she 
was  frankly  old  at  an  early  age,  and  she  suppressed  the 
autumn  season.  While  most  women  are  concerned 
to  retreat  in  good  order,  prolonging  their  age  of  yester- 
day, she  took  the  bull  by  the  horns  and  installed  her- 
self, without  haggling,  in  the  age  of  the  morrow.  It 
was  said  of  her  that  "  all  women  dress  as  they  did 
yesterday;  no  one  but  Mme.  Geoffrin  dresses  for 
to-morrow." 

Mme.  Geoffrin  is  thought  to  have  taken  her  lessons 
of  the  great  world  from  Mme.  de  Tencin,  and  to  have 
formed  herself  in  that  school.  The  assiduity  of  her 
visits  being  remarked,  Mme.  de  Tencin  is  quoted  as 
saying  to  a  knot  of  her  intimates:  "Do  you  know 
what  the  Geoffrin  comes  here  for  ?  She  comes  to  see 
what  she  can  collect  out  of  my  property."  That 
"  property  "  was  worth  some  trouble,  for  it  consisted 


/IDaC)ame  Geotfrin,  3S5 

of  Fontenelle,  Montesquieu,  Mairan,  and  others  of  their 
kind. 

Mme.  de  Tencin  is  much  less  remarkable  as  the 
author  of  romantic  and  sentimental  tales  (in  which  she 
may  have  been  assisted  by  her  nephews)  than  for  her 
spirit  of  intrigue,  her  wily  manoeuvres,  and  for  the 
boldness  and  range  of  her  opinions.  A  woman  of  little 
worth,  some  of  whose  actions  came  near  to  being 
crimes,  those  who  approached  her  were  captivated 
by  her  gentle  and  almost  kindly  air.  When  her  in- 
terests were  not  concerned,  she  could  give  safe  and 
practical  advice,  by  which  others  profited  in  their 
lives.  She  knew  the  end  of  the  game  in  every- 
thing. More  than  one  great  statesman,  even  in  our 
own  day,  would  have  been  the  better  for  keeping  be- 
fore his  eyes  this  maxim,  which  she  often  repeated: 
"Men  of  intelligence  make  many  mistakes  in  conduct 
because  they  never  believe  the  world  to  be  as  stupid 
as  it  is."  Nine  of  her  letters  that  were  published 
(all  being  addressed  to  the  Due  de  Richelieu  during 
the  campaign  of  1743),  show  her  to  us  in  all  the  ma- 
noeuvres of  her  ambition,  working  to  seize  power  for 
herself  and  her  brother  the  cardinal,  during  that  brief 
moment  when  the  king,  emancipated  at  last  by  the 
death  of  Cardinal  de  Fleury,  had  not  yet  taken  a  formal 
mistress.  Never  has  Louis  XV  been  judged  more 
profoundly,  or  with  more  clear-sighted  and  better- 
founded  feelings  of  contempt  than  in  those  nine  letters 
of  Mme.  de  Tencin.     As  early  as  the  year  1743,  this 

VOL.    I. — 25. 


386  /IDaDame  aeotfrin, 

intriguing  woman  has  flashes  of  perception  that 
pierce  the  horizon:  "  Unless  God  puts  his  hand  in  it 
visibly,"  she  writes,  "it  is  physically  impossible  that 
the  State  should  not  be  overthrown."  It  was  this  able 
mistress  whom  Mme.  Geoffrin  consulted,  and  from 
whom  she  received  good  counsel,  notably  that  of 
never  refusing  any  connection,  any  offer  of  friendship; 
for  if  nine  out  of  ten  brought  her  nothing,  the  tenth 
might  compensate  for  all;  "and  besides,"  said  this 
woman  of  resource,  "everything  comes  into  use  in  a 
household  when  we  ourselves  know  how  to  handle 
the  tools." 

Mme.  Geoffrin  did,  in  part,  inherit  the  salon  and 
methods  of  Mme.  de  Tencin;  but  in  confining  her 
ability  to  the  sphere  of  private  life  she  singularly  ex- 
tended it,  and  in  a  path  that  was  wholly  honourable. 
Mme.  de  Tencin  moved  heaven  and  earth  to  make  her 
brother  prime-minister:  Mme.  Geoffrin,  putting  poli- 
tics aside,  and  never  meddling  in  matters  of  religion, 
became  herself,  by  her  infinite  art,  by  her  spirit  of 
consistency  and  propriety,  a  sort  of  skilful  adminis- 
trator or,  as  one  might  say,  a  great  minister  of  society, 
one  of  those  ministers  who  are  all  the  more  influential 
because  they  are  less  proclaimed  and  more  permanent. 

From  the  first,  she  conceived  the  idea  of  this  ma- 
chine called  a  salon  to  its  full  extent,  and  was  able  to 
organise  it  completely,  with  the  gentlest  and  most  im- 
perceptible machinery,  but  skilful  and  kept  in  repair 
by  continual  watchfulness.     She  not  only  sought  and 


/IDaC)ame  6eoffrin.  387 

welcomed  men  of  Letters,  properly  so-called,  but  she 
was  solicitous  for  artists,  sculptors,  and  painters,  seek- 
ing to  bring  them  all  into  relations  with  one  another 
and  with  people  of  the  great  world;  in  short  she  con- 
ceived the  Encyclopaedia  of  the  century  in  action  and  in 
conversation  around  her.  Every  week  she  gave  two 
dinners;  one,  on  Monday,  to  artists:  at  that  could  be 
seen  Van  Loo,  Vernet,  Boucher,  Latour,  Naltier,  Vien, 
Lagrenee,  Soufftot,  Lemoine,  some  amateurs  of  dis- 
tinction and  patrons  of  art,  some  literary  men,  like 
Marmontel,  to  sustain  the  conversation  and  make  a 
bond  between  the  rest.  Wednesday  was  the  dinner 
for  the  men  of  Letters;  at  which  were  present 
d'Alembert,  Mairan,  Marivaux,  Marmontel,  the  Chev- 
alier de  Chastellux,  Morellet,  Saint-Lambert,  Hel- 
vetius,  Raynal,  Thomas,  Grimm,  d'Holbach,  and 
Burigny  of  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions.  One  woman 
only  was  admitted  besides  the  mistress  of  the  house, 
and  that  was  Mile,  de  Lespinasse.  Mme.  GeoflFrin 
had  noticed  that  several  women  at  a  dinner  distracted 
the  guests,  broke  up  and  scattered  conversation;  and 
what  she  liked  was  unity — remaining  herself  its  centre. 
After  dinner  the  house  continued  open  for  other 
guests,  and  the  evening  ended  by  a  little  supper,  very 
simple  but  very  choice,  composed  of  five  or  six  inti- 
mate friends,  among  them  certain  women,  the  flower 
of  the  great  world.  Not  a  foreigner  of  distinction  lived 
in,  or  passed  through  Paris  without  aspiring  to  be  re- 
ceived  by   Mme.    Geoffrin.      Princes   came  there  as 


388  /Il^a^ame  ©eotfrin. 

private  individuals;  ambassadors  never  stayed  away 
when  once  they  had  a  footing  there.  Europe  was 
represented  in  the  persons  of  Caraccioli,  Creutz, 
Galiani,  Gatti,  Hume,  and  Gibbon. 

We  can  now  see  that  of  all  the  salons  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  that  of  Mme.  GeofTrin  was  the  most 
complete.  It  was  more  so  than  that  of  Mme.  Du 
Deffand  who,  after  the  defection  of  d'Alembert  and 
others  consequent  upon  the  departure  of  Mile,  de 
Lespinasse,  had  lost  nearly  all  the  men  of  Letters. 
The  salon  of  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  save  for  six  or  seven 
earnest  friends,  was  made  up  of  persons  little  bound 
together,  taken  here  and  there,  but  assorted  by  that 
brilliant  woman  with  infinite  art.  The  salon  of  Mme. 
Geoffrin  represents,  on  the  contrary,  the  great  centre 
and  gathering-place  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  its 
decent  conduct,  its  animated  decorum,  it  makes  a 
counterpoise  to  the  little  dinners  and  licentious  sup- 
pers of  Mile.  Quinault,  Mile.  Guimard,  and  the  financial 
magnates,  the  Pelletiers  and  the  La  Popelinieres. 
Towards  its  close,  Mme.  Geoffrin's  salon  witnessed 
the  rise,  in  emulation  of  and  slightly  in  rivalry  with  it, 
ofthe  salons  of  Baron  d'Holbach  andofMme.  Helvetius, 
which  were  composed  partly  of  the  cream  of  Mme. 
Geoffrin's  guests,  and  partly  of  certain  hotheads  whom 
she  had  found  too  excitable  to  admit  to  her  dinners. 
The  century  became,  in  the  end,  a  little  weary  of  be- 
ing controlled  by  her  and  held  in  leading-strings;  it 
wanted  to  speak  out  loud  with  joy  at  heart. 


/©a&ame  ©eoftrin.  389 

The  spirit  that  Mme.  Geoffrin  brought  into  the 
ordering  and  management  of  the  little  empire  she  had 
so  broadly  conceived  was  a  spirit  of  naturalness,  oi 
correctness,  of  delicacy,  and  of  refinement,  descending 
to  the  smallest  details;  an  adroit,  active,  and  gentle 
spirit.  She  had  caused  a  plane  to  be  passed  over  the 
carvings  in  her  apartment;  and  it  was  the  same  in  her 
moral  existence:  "Nothing  in  relief"  seemed  to  be 
her  motto:  "  My  mind,"  she  said,  "is  like  my  legs: 
I  like  to  walk  on  level  ground;  and  1  do  not  want  to 
climb  a  mountain  for  the  pleasure  of  saying  when  I  get 
there,  'I  have  climbed  this  mountain.'"  She  liked 
simplicity,  and  may,  on  occasion,  have  slightly  affected 
it.  Her  activity  was  of  a  kind  that  is  chiefly  noticeable 
through  good  order;  one  of  those  discreet  activities  that 
act  at  all  points  silently  and  insensibly.  Mistress  of  a 
household,  she  had  an  eye  to  everything;  she  pre- 
sided; she  sometimes  scolded,  but  with  a  scolding 
that  was  hers  alone;  she  desired  that  talk  should  be 
stopped  in  time;  she  policed  her  salon.  With  a  single 
sentence,  "That  will  do,"  she  checked  at  the  right 
moment  conversations  that  were  wandering  towards 
hazardous  topics,  and  heads  that  were  getting  heated; 
the  latter  feared  her,  and  carried  their  outbreaks 
elsewhere. 

She  held  it  as  a  principle  not  to  talk  herself,  except 
when  necessary;  and  not  to  intervene  unless  at  certain 
moments;  and  never  for  any  length  of  time.  It  was 
then,   however,  that  she  gave  wise  maxims  or  told 


390  /IDa&ame  (5eotfrirt» 

piquant  tales  and  anecdotes  on  morals  or  actions, 
usually  illustrated  by  some  familiar  image  or  expres- 
sion. All  this,  however,  was  chiefly  pleasing  as  it 
came  from  her  lips;  she  knew  this,  and  she  used  to  say 
that  she  did  not  wish  people  "to  preach  her  sermons, 
tell  her  tales,  or  touch  her  tongs." 

Having  posed  so  early  as  an  old  woman  and  as  the 
"mamma"  of  the  persons  she  received,  she  found  a 
means  of  governing,  a  little  trick  or  artifice,  which  be- 
came in  the  end  a  sort  of  mania.  This  was  to  scold; 
but  to  scold  as  a  compliment.  Not  every  one  who 
wished  could  be  scolded  by  her;  it  was  the  high- 
est mark  of  her  favour  and  guidance.  He  whom 
she  liked  the  best  was  the  most  scolded.  Horace 
Walpole,  before  he  passed  with  colours  flying  into  the 
camp  of  Mme.  Du  Deffand,  wrote  the  following  letter 
from  Paris  to  his  friend  the  poet  Gray  : 

"  ( January  25,  1 766)  Mme.  Geoffrin,  of  whom  you  must  have  heard 
a  great  deal,  is  a  very  extraordinary  woman,  with  more  common  sense 
than  I  have  almost  ever  met  with.  She  has  great  quickness  in  read- 
ing characters  at  a  glance,  much  penetration  in  going  to  the  bottom  of 
each  one,  and  a  pencil  that  never  misses  a  likeness — which  is  seldom 
flattering.  In  spite  of  her  birth  and  the  absurd  prejudices  in  France 
about  nobility,  she  exacts  for  herself  a  great  court  and  a  well-maintained 
respect.  She  has  succeeded  in  this  by  a  thousand  little  artifices  and 
many  kind  offices  of  friendship;  also  by  a  liberty  and  severity  which 
seem  to  be  almost  her  only  object  in  drawing  society  round  her;  for 
she  never  ceases  to  scold  those  she  has  once  cajoled.  She  has  little 
taste  and  less  knowledge,  but  she  protects  artists  and  authors,  and  she 
pays  court  to  a  small  number  of  great  people  to  gain  influence  that 
may  be  useful  to  her  proteges.  She  got  her  training  under  the  famous 
Mme.  de  Tencin,  who  taught  her  as  a  rule  never  to  rebuff  any  one, 
for,   said  that  clever  matron,  '  even  if  nine  out  often  would  not  give 


/IDa^ame  6eo(frin.  391 

themselves  a  farthing's  worth  of  trouble  for  you,  the  tenth  may  become 
a  useful  friend.'  She  has  neither  adopted  nor  rejected  that  plan  as  a 
whole,  but  she  has  kept  to  the  spirit  of  the  maxim.  In  a  word,  she 
presents  to  us  an  epitome  of  empire  which  exists  by  means  of  rewards 
and  penalties." 

The  office  of  majordomo  of  her  salon  was  usually 
confided  to  Burigny,  one  of  her  oldest  friends,  and  the 
most  scolded  of  all.  When  there  had  been  some  in- 
fraction of  the  rules,  some  outbreak  of  imprudence  in 
speech,  she  laid  the  blame  on  him  for  not  keeping 
better  order. 

People  laughed,  and  even  joked  with  her  about  it, 
all  the  while  submitting  to  a  rule  that  was  narrow  and 
exacting,  though  tempered  by  much  kindness  and 
beneficence.  This  right  of  correcting  she  secured  to 
herself  by  now  and  then  placing  in  the  pocket  of  a 
guest  some  good  little  pension — not  forgetting  the 
annual  gift  of  the  velvet  breeches. 

Fontenelle  did  not  make  Mme.  Geoffrin  the  execu- 
trix of  his  will  without  reason.  Mme.  Geoffrin,  pro- 
perly observed,  seems  to  me  to  have  been,  by  the 
nature  of  her  mind,  by  the  method  of  her  proceedings, 
and  by  her  class  of  influence,  a  female  Fontenelle;  a 
Fontenelle  more  active  in  beneficence  (I  shall  return  to 
that  point  later),  but  a  true  Fontenelle  in  caution,  in 
her  way  of  conceiving  and  regulating  happiness,  by  a 
manner  of  speech,  familiar  at  will,  epigrammatic  and 
ironical,  but  without  bitterness.  She  is  a  Fontenelle 
who,  for  the  very  reason  that  she  is  a  woman,  has  more 
vivacity  and  more  affectionate  and  kindly  impulses. 


392  /IDa&ame  Geottrin. 

But,  like  him,  she  loved  quietude  and  to  walk  on  level 
ground.  All  that  was  ardent  around  her  made  her 
uneasy;  she  thought  that  reason  itself  was  wrong 
when  impassioned.  She  compared  her  mind,  one 
day,  to  "  a  roll,  which  unfolds,  unrolls  by  degrees." 
She  was  in  no  hurry  to  unroll  it  rapidly.  "  Perhaps  at 
my  death,"  she  said,  "the  roll  may  not  be  wholly 
unrolled." 

That  wise  slowness  is  a  distinctive  trait  in  her  mind 
and  of  her  influence.  She  feared  too  hasty  emotions 
and  changes  that  were  too  abrupt:  "  We  must  not," 
she  said,  "  pull  down  the  old  house  before  we  build 
the  new  one."  She  moderated  the  epoch,  then  begin- 
ning to  be  so  ardent,  as  much  as  she  could,  and  tried 
to  discipline  it.  It  was  an  offence  to  her  if,  at  one  of 
her  dinners,  things  were  said  that  might  have  sent 
the  speakers  to  the  Bastille.  Marmontel  perceived  that 
he  was  lowered  in  her  favour  after  his  affair  of 
Bilisaire.  In  short,  she  continued  to  represent  the 
spirit,  already  philosophical  but  still  moderate,  of  the 
first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  so  long  as  it  did 
not  cease  to  respect  certain  limits.  I  picture  to  my 
own  mind  this  constant  care  and  solicitude  of  Mme. 
Geoffrin,  by  an  image:  to  the  bust  of  Diderot  by  Fal- 
conet she  added  a  wig  (a  marble  wig,  if  you  please). 

Her  beneficence  was  as  great  as  it  was  ingenious; 
in  her  it  was  a  true  gift  of  nature:  she  had  "  the  giv- 
ing humour,"  she  said.  "  Give  and  forgive  "  was  her 
motto.     Benefaction  on  her  part  was  perpetual.     She 


/IDa^ame  6eotfrin,  393 

could  not  refrain  from  making  presents  to  every  one ;  to 
tiie  poorest  man  of  Letters  as  well  as  to  the  Empress  of 
Germany;  and  she  gave  them  with  an  art  and  a  per- 
fection of  delicacy  which  would  have  made  the  refusal 
of  them  churlish.  Her  sensibility  became  perfected  by 
the  practice  of  kindness,  and  by  an  exquisite  social 
tact.  Her  beneficence,  like  all  her  other  qualities,  had 
something  singular  and  original  about  it  that  was  hers 
alone.  Many  charming,  unlooked-for  instances  of  this, 
such  as  Sterne  would  have  turned  to  profit,  are  told  of 
her;  I  will  relate  but  one: 

It  was  remarked  to  her,  one  day,  that  everything  in 
her  house  was  perfect,  except  the  cream,  and  that  was 
not  good.  "  How  can  I  help  it  ?  "  she  said.  "  I  can- 
not change  my  milkwoman."  "  What  is  there  about 
your  milkwoman  that  you  cannot  change  her  ?  " 
"Why,  I  gave  her  two  cows."  "A  fine  reason  !" 
they  cried  all  round  her.  The  fact  was,  that  one  day 
when  the  milkwoman  was  weeping  in  distress  at 
having  lost  her  cow,  Mme.  GeofTrin  had  given  her 
two;  the  extra  one  to  console  her  for  having  wept; 
and  from  that  day  the  giver  felt  that  she  could  not 
change  her  milkwoman.  This  is  rare,  and  it  is  deli- 
cate. Many  persons  would  have  been  capable  of  giv- 
ing a  cow,  or  even  two;  but  to  keep  an  ungrateful  or 
negligent  milkwoman,  in  spite  of  her  bad  cream,  is 
what  few  would  have  done.  Mme.  Geoffrin  did  it  for 
her  own  sake;  so  as  not  to  spoil  the  memory  of  her 
first  kindly  action.    Just  as  she  scolded,  not  to  correct 


394  /IDa^ame  (3eottrin. 

but  for  her  own  personal  pleasure,  so  did  she  give,  not 
to  make  worthy  persons  happy  or  grateful,  but  to  con- 
tent and  please  herself.  Her  benefactions  were  stamped 
by  a  certain  roughness  of  humour;  she  held  thanks  in 
aversion:  "  Thanks,"  some  one  said,  "  caused  her  a 
kindly  and  almost  real  anger."  About  this  she  had  a 
theory  which  she  carried  into  paradox;  she  even  went 
so  far  as  to  make  a  formal  eulogy  of  ingratitude. 
What  is  very  clear  is  that,  even  in  giving,  she  chose 
to  pay  herself  by  her  own  hands,  and  enjoy  all  alone 
the  satisfaction  of  obliging  others. 

Shall  I  say  it  ?  1  think  I  find  here,  even  in  this  ex- 
cellent nature,  that  corner  of  selfishness  and  hardness 
so  inherent  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  pupil  of 
Mme.  de  Tencin,  the  friend  of  Fontenelle,  is  visible 
even  at  the  moment  when  she  gives  way  to  an  incli- 
nation of  her  heart — she  gives  way  to  it,  but  without 
warmth,  and  still  arranging  all  things.  We  know  that 
Montesquieu  also  did  a  fine  act  of  benevolence,  after 
which  he  escaped  abruptly  and  almost  harshly  from  the 
thanks  and  tears  of  those  he  had  obliged.  Contempt 
for  mankind  is  here  shown  even  in  benevolence.  Is  it 
taking  the  right  moment  to  show  contempt  to  choose 
that  in  which  we  uplift  men,  or  touch  their  hearts,  or 
make  them  better  ?  In  St.  Paul's  admirable  chapter  on 
Charity  we  find,  among  other  characteristics  of  that 
divine  virtue:  "  Charity  seeketh  not  its  own;  .  .  . 
thinketh  no  evil."  Here,  on  the  contrary,  this  worldly 
and  social  benevolence  sought  its  pleasure,  its  personal 


flDa^ame  (Beoftdn.  395 

relish  and  satisfaction,  mingling  with  them  a  little 
irony  and  malice. 

I  know  all  that  can  be  said  in  favour  of  that  respect- 
able and  charming  virtue,  even  when  it  thinks  of  itself. 
Mme.  Geoffrin,  when  questioned  about  it,  had  a  thou- 
sand good  answers,  all  as  shrewd  as  herself:  "Those," 
she  said,  "who  seldom  oblige,  do  not  need  working 
maxims;  but  those  who  oblige  often  ought  to  do  so  in 
the  manner  most  agreeable  to  themselves,  because  we 
want  to  do  conveniently  what  we  wish  to  do  every 
day."  There  is  something  of  Franklin  in  that  maxim ; 
of  Franklin  correcting  and  rather  blurring  the  too 
spiritual  meaning  of  Charity  as  given  by  St.  Paul.  Let 
us  respect,  let  us  honour  the  natural  and  reasonable 
liberality  of  Mme.  Geoffrin;  but  let  us,  at  the  same 
time,  recognise  that  there  is  lacking  in  that  kindness 
and  that  beneficence  a  certain  celestial  fire,  just  as  there 
was  lacking  in  the  whole  social  spirit  and  art  of  the 
eighteenth  century  a  bloom  of  imagination  and  poesy, 
a  depth  of  celestial  light.  Never  do  we  see  above  us 
the  blue  of  the  heavens  and  the  radiance  of  the  stars. 

We  have  now  obtained  an  idea  of  the  form  and  qual- 
ity of  Mme.  Geoffrin's  mind.  The  dominant  charac- 
teristics in  her  were  justness,  fitness,  and  good  sense. 
Horace  Walpole,  whom  I  like  to  quote  as  a  good  judge 
above  suspicion,  saw  much  of  Mme.  Geoffrin  before  he 
belonged  to  Mme.  Du  Deffand;  he  enjoyed  her  ex- 
tremely, and  always  spoke  of  her  as  having  one  of  the 
best  heads  and  best  understandings  he  had  ever  met; 


396  /IDa&ame  Oeottrin. 

and  also  as  the  person  who  had  the  greatest  knowledge 
of  the  world.  Writing  to  Lady  Hervey,  after  an  attack 
of  the  gout,  he  said: 

"  Paris,  October  13,  1765,  Mme.  Geoffrin  came  the  other  evening 
and  sat  two  hours  by  my  bedside;  I  could  have  sworn  it  was  my 
Lady  Hervey,  so  full  of  kindness  was  she.  And  this  together  with  so 
much  good  sense,  information,  sound  advice  and  timely.  She  has, 
especially,  a  way  of  reproving  you  that  charms  me.  I  have  never  in 
my  life  seen  any  one  who  detects  so  quickly  the  defects,  vanities,  and 
false  airs  of  others,  or  who  exposes  them  with  such  clearness  and  con- 
vinces you  of  them  so  easily.  I  never  before  liked  being  reproved ;  but 
now,  you  cannot  imagine  what  a  taste  I  have  for  it.  1  have  made  her 
my  Confessor  and  Director  both,  and  I  begin  to  believe  that  I  shall 
be,  in  the  end,  a  reasonable  human  being — which  I  never  aimed  at 
being  until  now.  The  next  time  I  see  her  I  mean  to  say:  '  O!  Com- 
mon Sense,  sit  thou  there;  1  have,  until  now,  thought  so  and  so;  tell 
me,  is  it,  or  is  it  not  absurd  ?  '—As  to  all  other  kinds  of  sense  and  wis- 
dom, 1  never  liked  them,  and  now  I  shall  hate  them  for  her  sake.  If 
it  were  worth  her  trouble  to  do  so,  1  can  assure  you,  Madam,  she 
might  rule  me  like  an  infant." 

At  all  times  he  speaks  of  her  as  Reason  incarnate. 
What  he  says  shows  us  the  species  of  charm,  the  sin- 
gular, scolding  charm  that  her  common  sense  exercised 
around  her.  She  liked  to  school  her  company,  and 
she  usually  made  it  like  its  lesson.  It  is  true  that  if 
any  one  did  not  accept  it,  if  he  tried  to  get  away  from 
her  desire  to  advise  and  reprove  him,  she  was  not 
pleased;  and  a  dry  little  tone  in  her  voice  soon  warned 
him  that  she  was  piqued  in  her  foible,  in  her  claim 
to  be  mentor  and  director. 

A  little  note  that  she  wrote  to  David  Hume  has 
been  lately  printed  as  a  specimen  of  her  way  of  abus- 


/IDaOame  6eoffrin,  397 

ing  people  when  she  was  pleased  with  them ;  I  sup- 
press the  faults  of  spelling — for  Mme.  Geofifrin  could 
not  spell,  and  made  no  secret  of  it: 

"Nothing  hinders  you,  my  big  rascal  [mon  gros 
drole]  from  being  a  perfect  dandy  but  playing  stern 
virtue  and  not  answering  the  love-letter  I  sent  you  by 
Gatti.  In  order  to  have  all  possible  airs  you  seem 
to  be  giving  yourself  that  of  being  modest.     . 

Mme.  de  Tencin  called  the  clever  men  of  her  soci- 
ety her  "  stupids  "  [betes] :  Mme.  Geofifrin  continued  to 
treat  them  as  such,  with  a  switch. 

She  judged  her  friends,  her  habitual  guests,  seri- 
ously and  with  accuracy.  Certain  scathing  remarks  that 
escaped  her,  not  then  in  jest,  have  been  preserved.  It 
was  she  who  said  of  the  Abbe  Trublet  when  some  one 
spoke  of  him  in  her  presence  as  a  man  of  intellect: 
"  He,  a  man  of  intellect!  he  is  a  fool  rubbed  with  intel- 
lect." She  said  of  the  Due  de  Nivernais:  "He  is  a 
failure  every  way,  soldier  failure,  ambassador  failure, 
author  failure."  Ruthiere  read  aloud  in  her  salon  his 
manuscript  "Anecdotes  on  Russia";  she  wanted  him 
to  throw  it  into  the  fire  and  offered  to  compensate  him 
with  a  sum  of  money.  Ruthiere  was  indignant,  and 
brought  forward  all  the  great  sentiments  of  honour 
and  disinterested  love  of  truth :  ' '  How  much  more  do 
you  want  ?"  was  her  only  reply.  We  see  that  Mme. 
Geofifrin  was  gentle  only  when  she  pleased;  and  that 
her  benignity  of  temper  and  beneficence  covered  some 
inward  bitterness. 


398  /IDaOame  (3eottrin. 

I  have  quoted  Franklin  in  relation  to  her.  She  had 
maxims  that  seemed  to  come  from  the  same  good 
sense,  calculating,  ingenious,  and  wholly  practical  like 
his.  She  had  engraved  on  her  card-counters  the  words : 
"Economy  is  the  source  of  independence  and  of 
liberty."  And  also  the  following:  "Never  let  the 
grass  grow  on  the  path  of  friendship." 

Her  mind  was  one  of  those  keen  minds  of  which 
Pascal  speaks ;  which  are  wont  to  judge  at  a  glance,  in- 
stantly, and  which  never  return  to  what  they  have 
once  been  mistaken  in.  Such  minds  dread  fatigue 
and  ennui,  and  their  sound,  sometimes  penetrating, 
judgment  is  not  continuous.  Mme.  Geoffrin,  gifted  in 
the  highest  degree  with  that  sort  of  mind,  differed 
wholly  in  this  respect  from  Mme.  du  Chatelet,  for  ex- 
ample, who  liked  to  follow  up  and  exhaust  an  argu- 
ment. These  delicate  and  quick  minds  are  specially 
fitted  for  knowledge  of  the  world  and  men;  they  like 
to  let  their  eyes  wander,  rather  than  fix  them  on  any- 
thing. Mme.  Geoffrin  needed,  to  save  her  from 
weariness,  a  great  variety  of  persons  and  things. 
Too  much  intensity  suffocated  her;  too  great  duration 
even  of  pleasure  made  it  unbearable  to  her:  "  Of  the 
most  charming  society  she  wanted  only  just  so  much 
as  she  could  take  at  her  own  time  and  ease."  A  visit 
which  threatened  to  be  prolonged  and  to  last  for  ever 
turned  her  pale  as  death.  Once,  when  she  saw  the 
excellent  Abbe  de  Saint-Pierre  settle  himself  in  her 
salon  for  a  long  winter's  evening,  she  felt  a  momentary 


/IDa^ame  Geotfrin.  399 

terror;  then,  inspired  by  the  desperate  situation,  she 
drew  the  worthy  man  out  so  skilfully  that  she  made 
him  amusing.  He  was  quite  astonished  himself,  and 
when,  at  parting,  she  complimented  him  on  his  con- 
versation he  replied:  "Madame,  I  am  only  an  in- 
strument on  which  you  have  played  skilfully."  Mme. 
Geoffrin  was  indeed  a  skilled  virtuoso. 

In  all  this,  I  have  simply  extracted  from  and  summed 
up  the  Memoirs  of  the  time.  It  is  a  greater  pleasure 
than  people  suppose  to  read  over  again  those  authors 
of  the  eighteenth  century  who  are  called  secondary,  but 
who  are  simply  excellent  in  their  sensible  prose.  There 
is  nothing  more  agreeable,  delicate,  and  distinguished 
than  the  pages  that  Marmontel  devotes  in  his  Memoirs 
to  Mme.  Geoffrin,  and  the  sketch  of  her  society. 
Morellet  himself,  in  speaking  of  her,  is  not  only  an  ex- 
cellent painter  but  an  admirable  annalist;  the  hand  that 
writes  is  rather  heavy,  but  the  pen  is  clear  and  fine. 
None  of  them,  down  to  Thomas,  who  was  held 
to  be  too  enthusiastic,  fails  to  give  very  charming 
and  very  happy  expression  to  their  sentiments  for 
Mme.  Geoffrin.  It  is  often  said  and  repeated  that 
Thomas  was  bombastic;  but  we  ourselves,  in  our 
present  style  of  writing,  have  become  so  turgid,  so 
metaphorical,  that  Thomas,  as  I  reread  him,  seems  to 
me  simple. 

The  great  event  of  Mme.  GeofFrin's  life  was  the 
journey  she  made  to  Poland  in  1766,  to  visit  the  king, 
Stanislas   Poniatowski.     She  had  known  him  when 


400  /iDaDame  0eoffrin. 

quite  a  young  man,  in  Paris,  and  he,  like  many  oth- 
ers, had  received  her  assistance.  He  had  hardly  as- 
cended the  throne  of  Poland  before  he  wrote  to  her: 
"Mamma,  your  son  is  king";  and  he  begged  her 
earnestly  to  come  and  see  him.  She  did  not  refuse, 
in  spite  of  her  advanced  age.  Passing  through  Vienna, 
she  was  the  object  of  marked  attentions  from  the  sov- 
ereigns. It  was  thought  that  a  small  diplomatic  mis- 
sion was  slipped  into  this  journey.  We  have  the 
letters  of  Mme.  Geoffrin  written  from  Warsaw;  they 
are  charming;  they  went  the  rounds  of  Paris,  and  it 
was  not  good  form  in  those  days  to  be  ignorant  of 
them.  Voltaire  chose  that  moment  to  write  to  her  as 
to  a  power,  begging  her  to  interest  the  King  of  Poland 
in  the  Sirven  family. 

Mme.  Geoffrin  was  so  well  balanced  that  this 
journey  did  not  turn  her  head.  Marmontel,  in  writ- 
ing to  her,  had  seemed  to  think  that  these  attentions 
shown  by  monarchs  to  a  private  person  must  make  a 
revolution  in  her  ideas.  Mme.  Geoffrin  recalls  him  to 
the  true  point  of  view : 

"No,  my  neighbour"  (neighbour,  because  Mar- 
montel had  an  apartment  in  the  same  house)  "no,  not  a 
word  is  true  of  all  that;  nothing  at  all  of  what  you 
think  will  happen.  Everything  will  remain  just 
the  same  when  I  return,  and  you  will  find  my  heart 
such  as  you  have  ever  known  it,  very  sensitive  to 
friendship." 

Writing  to  d'Alembert,  also  from  Warsaw,  she  says, 


/IDaDame  6eotfiim  401 

while  congratulating  herself  (but  without  intoxica- 
tion), on  her  lot: 

"This  journey  ended,  I  feel  I  shall  have  seen  enough 
of  men  and  of  things  to  be  convinced  that  they  are 
everywhere  very  much  the  same.  1  have  my  store- 
house of  reflections  and  comparisons  well  supplied 
for  the  rest  of  my  life.     .     .     ." 

And  she  adds  a  sentiment  as  touching  as  it  is  noble 
about  her  royal  pupil: 

"  It  is  a  terrible  position  to  be  King  of  Poland.  I 
dare  not  tell  him  how  unfortunate  I  think  him;  alas! 
he  feels  it  himself  only  too  often.  All  that  I  have  seen 
since  I  quitted  my  penates  makes  me  thank  God  that  I 
was  born  a  Frenchwoman  and  a  private  individual." 

On  her  return  from  Warsaw,  where  she  had  been 
loaded  with  honours  and  attentions,  she  increased  in 
skilful  modesty.  We  may  believe  that  this  modesty  in 
her  was  only  a  gentle  manner,  replete  with  good  taste, 
of  bearing  her  self-gratification  and  her  new  fame. 
But  she  excelled  in  such  discreet  and  fitting  conduct. 
Like  Mme.  de  Maintenon,  she  belonged  to  the  race  of 
the  self-glorifying  modest  people.  When  persons  con- 
gratulated and  questioned  her  about  this  journey, 
whether  she  answered  them  or  did  not  answer,  she  put 
no  affectation  into  her  words  nor  into  her  silence.  Never 
did  any  one  know  better  than  she — this  Parisian  bour- 
geoise — how  to  deal  with  great  people,  how  to  get  out 
of  them  all  she  wanted  without  either  effacing  herself 
or  presuming  in  any  way,  simply  by  keeping,  with  an 

VOL.  I. — 26. 


402  /IDa^ame  (Beotfrin. 

air  of  ease  in  all  things  and  to  all  persons,  within  the 
limits  of  decorum. 

Like  all  great  persons  she  had  the  honour  of  being 
attacked.  Palissot  tried  twice  to  arraign  her  on  the 
stage  as  patroness  of  the  Encyclopsedists.  But  of  all 
these  attacks  the  one  Mme.  Geoffrin  felt  most  keenly 
was  the  publication  of  the  private  letters  of  Mon- 
tesquieu, which  the  Abbe  de  Guasco  caused  to  be 
printed  in  1767,  for  the  purpose  of  being  disagreeable 
to  her.  Some  of  Montesquieu's  remarks  against  Mme. 
Geoffrin  indicate  pretty  plainly  what,  indeed,  we  might 
otherwise  divine,  namely:  that  wherever  there  are  men 
to  be  governed  there  is  always  something  of  intrigue 
and  of  manoeuvring,  even  when  women  undertake  it. 
Mme.  Geoffrin  had  sufficient  influence  to  stop  the 
publication,  and  the  passages  relating  to  her  were 
cancelled. 

The  last  illness  of  Mme.  Geoffrin  brought  about  cer- 
tain singular  circumstances.  While  supporting  the  En- 
cyclopedie  with  her  gifts,  she  had  always  kept  a  corner 
in  her  mind  for  religion.  La  Harpe  relates  that  she 
had  at  her  beck  and  call  a  Capuchin  confessor,  a  con- 
fessor with  very  wide  sleeves  for  the  convenience  of 
her  friends  who  might  need  them;  for  if  she  did  not 
like  to  have  her  habitues  get  themselves  put  into  the 
Bastille,  still  less  did  she  like  them  to  die  without  con- 
fession. As  for  her,  while  living  with  the  philoso- 
phers, she  always  went  to  Mass,  as  if  for  assignation ; 
and  she  had  her  seat  in  the  church  of  the  Capucines,  as 


/IDa&ame  GeotCrfn,  403 

others  had  their  petite  maison.  Age  increased  this 
serious  or  becoming  inclination. 

At  the  close  of  a  Jubilee,  which  she  observed  with 
too  much  exertion  in  the  summer  of  1776,  she  was 
struck  down  by  paralysis,  and  her  daughter,  profiting 
by  her  condition,  shut  the  door  to  the  philosophers, 
whose  influence  on  her  mother  she  dreaded.  D'Alem- 
bert,  Marmontel,  Morellet,  were  harshly  excluded. 
Imagine  the  clamour!  Turgot  wrote  to  Condorcet: 
"  1  pity  that  poor  Mme.  Geoffrin  for  undergoing  such 
slavery,  and  for  having  her  last  moments  poisoned  by 
that  villainous  daughter."  Mme.  Geoffrin  was  no 
longer  mistress  of  her  actions;  even  after  she  came  to 
herself,  she  felt  that  she  had  to  choose  between  her 
daughter  and  her  friends;  the  ties  of  blood  carried  the 
day:  "My  daughter,"  she  said,  smiling,  "is  like 
Godefroi  de  Bouillon;  she  wants  to  defend  my  tomb 
against  the  Infidels."  She  frequently  sent  to  those  In- 
fidels her  regards  and  her  regrets;  she  also  sent  them 
gifts.  Her  mind  grew  feeble,  but  its  character  re- 
mained the  same,  and  she  roused  up,  now  and  then, 
to  utter  sayings  that  showed  she  was  still  herself. 
They  were  talking,  one  evening,  round  her  bed  of  the 
means  that  Governments  might  employ  to  make  their 
peoples  happy;  each  person  present  suggested  fine 
things:  "Add,"  she  said,  "the  care  oi  procuring 
pleasures  for  them;  a  thing  that  is  never  enough 
thought  of." 

She  died  in  the  parish  of   Saint-Roch  on  the  6th 


404  /©a&ame  Geofifrfn* 

of  October,  1777.  The  name  of  Mme.  Geoffrin, 
and  her  form  of  influence,  recall  to  us,  naturally,  an- 
other interesting  name,  which  it  is  now  too  late  to 
weigh  with  hers  in  this  essay.  The  Mme.  Geoffrin  of 
our  time,  Mme.  Recamier,  had,  in  excess  of  the  other, 
youth,  beauty,  poesy,  the  graces,  a  star  on  her  brow, 
and,  let  us  add,  a  goodness,  a  kindness  that  was  not 
more  skilful  but  more  angelic.  That  which  made 
Mme.  Geoffrin  superior  in  her  government  of  a  salon 
that  was  far  otherwise  extended  and  important,  was  a 
firmer,  and,  in  some  sort  more  domestic  judgment, 
which  made  less  efforts  and  advances,  fewer  sacrifices 
to  the  tastes  of  others — in  short,  it  was  the  unique 
good  sense  of  which  Walpole  has  given  us  so  clear  an 
idea,  and  a  mind  not  only  delicate  and  refined  but  just 
and  penetrating. 


^be  abbe  Bartbelcmi?, 


405 


TTbe  Hbb^  JSattbelemi?* 

I  SPEAK  to-day  of  the  author  of  Le  t^oyage  dujeune 
Anacharsis,  the  Abbe  Barthelemy.  That  work, 
which  made  his  reputation  and  which  appeared 
in  1788,  seems  to  have  been  laid  aside  for  some  time 
and  judged  with  a  severity  that  ought  not  to  run  into 
injustice.  It  had,  when  it  appeared,  brilliant  success, 
which  was  concurrent  with  the  first  events  of  the 
Revolution,  and  lasted  as  long  as  our  fathers  lived. 
They  were  grateful  to  the  Abbe  Barthelemy  for  what 
he  had  taught  them,  in  a  few  days'  reading,  of  that 
Greek  world  and  that  ancient  society  then  talked  of 
constantly,  but  into  which  very  few  had  actually  pene- 
trated. The  Abbe  Barthelemy  was  to  them,  in  this  re- 
spect, a  teacher  such  as  Rollin  had  formerly  been,  but 
one  more  fitted  to  the  new  era;  a  teacher,  brilliant  and 
agreeable,  polished  and  fluent,  enlightened,  pleasing, 
and  very  animated;  skilful  in  concealing  the  depth  and 
accuracy  of  his  knowledge  beneath  a  grace  that  was 
almost  worldly. 

He  himself,  as  a  man,  has  a  character  distinct  and 
modestly  original  in  its  delicate  shading,  among  all 
the  celebrated  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He 
deserves  to  be  known  and  studied  in  his  private  life. 

407 


4o8  xibe  Hbbe  Bartbelems. 

Literary  criticism,  which  is  justly  proud  and  happy  to 
rise  to  the  occasion  when  it  meets  a  lofty  subject, 
takes  pleasure,  nevertheless,  from  its  own  nature,  in 
those  medium  subjects  (not  for  that  reason  mediocre) 
which  allow  the  social  moral  to  penetrate  them. 

When  old,  having  reached  the  end  of  an  existence 
until  then  favoured  and  most  equably  gentle  and 
peaceful,  the  Abbe  Barthelemy  suddenly  found  him- 
self deprived  by  the  Revolution  of  fortune,  ease  of  life, 
and  liberty;  in  those  moments  of  deprivation  and  re- 
tirement, he  formed  the  idea  of  writing  his  Memoirs; 
these  remained  unfinished,  but  so  far  as  they  go,  they 
are  the  source  from  which  we  learn  to  know  him  best. 
His  family  lived  at  the  South,  in  the  pretty  little  town 
of  Aubagne,  between  Marseilles  and  Toulon  ;  he  him- 
self was  born  at  Cassis,  during  a  visit  his  mother  made 
there  in  January,  1716.  He  has  given  us  a  sunny 
idea  of  his  childhood  in  the  bosom  of  a  united  and 
tender  family.  He  had  a  brother  and  two  sisters; 
having  lost  his  mother  early,  he  found  in  his  father  an 
affection  that  was  truly  maternal.  He  studied  at  the 
College  of  the  Oratorians  at  Marseilles;  and  if  we  had 
to  select  a  pupil  who  expressed,  in  its  best  aspect,  the 
form  of  education  received  at  the  Oratory,  liberal, 
ornate,  varied,  sufficiently  philosophical  and  morally 
decent,  no  better  example  could  be  chosen  than  Bar- 
thelemy. He  had,  even  in  college,  brilliant  successes, 
and  showed  tastes  already  academic;  and  he  possessed, 
as  it  were  from  birth,  a  very  marked   literary  senti- 


JEAN  JACQUES  BARTHELEMY. 
After  the  bust  by  Houdon. 


^be  Hbbe  Bartbelemg.  409 

ment.  Apropos  of  one  of  the  public  exercises  that 
took  place  in  the  great  hall  of  the  college,  the  audience 
being  in  part  composed  of  the  prettiest  women  of  the 
town,  he  records  that  when  he  saw  M.  de  la  Visclede, 
secretary  of  the  Marseilles  Academy,  enter,  "  I  could  see 
no  one  but  him ;  my  heart  palpitated  as  I  looked  at  him. " 
Such  was  Barthelemy  at  fifteen  years  of  age;  an 
equable  soul,  affectionate  and  refined;  with  a  mind 
eager,  inquisitive,  quick;  hungry  for  knowledge,  put- 
ting nothing  above  the  beautiful  and  noble  studies  that 
can  be  cultivated  peacefully  in  the  shade  of  Academies 
and  Museums.  We  could  almost  think  that  some- 
thing of  the  penetration  and  gentleness  of  the  ancient 
Greeks,  those  first  colonisers  and  civilisers  of  the 
Phocian  country,  had  passed  into  him,  and  that  he  had 
tasted  their  honey  too  long  ever  to  be  weaned  from  it. 
"I  destined  myself,"  he  says,  "for  the  ecclesiastical 
profession";  for  him  the  Church  meant  what  it  has 
been  at  so  many  epochs,  a  haven  of  peace  and  study,  a 
shelter  for  the  learned  and  innocent  researches  from 
which  a  scholarly  and  cultivated  mind  cannot  bear 
to  be  distracted.  The  Bishop  of  Marseilles,  who  had 
been  so  admirable  during  the  plague,  the  virtuous  Bel- 
zunce,  did  not  like  the  theological  and  semi-jansenist 
doctrines  of  the  Oratorians;  and  it  was  through  him 
that  Barthelemy  pursued  his  philosophical  and  theo- 
logical studies  with  the  Jesuits.  But  though  he  passed 
that  way,  he  was  never  acclimated  to  it,  and  when- 
ever he  spoke  of  the  Jesuits   it  was   always   with  a 


410  Ube  Bbbe  Bartbelem^. 

slight  touch  of  ridicule  and  aversion,  naturally  felt  by 
the  former  pupil  of  the  Oratorians  and  by  the  friend  of 
the  Due  de  Choiseul. 

The  account  that  Barthelemy  gives  of  the  early  years 
of  his  youth,  passed  in  Provence  at  his  various  studies, 
learning  Hebrew,  Arabic,  the  history  of  medals, 
mathematics,  and  astronomy,  is  lively  and  piquant;  he 
endeavoured  to  make  it  so  by  means  of  anecdotes  well 
related.  The  study  of  mathematics  and  of  astronomy  in 
which  he  immersed  himself  for  quite  a  long  time, 
seemed  to  him  afterwards  one  of  the  mistakes  and 
dissipations  of  his  youth.  Without  ambition,  without 
strong  passion,  mingling  liberal  studies  that  were  often 
intense,  with  the  amusements  of  society,  with  read- 
ings among  friends  and  little  concerts,  neglected  and 
forgotten  by  his  bishop,  he  lived  at  Aubagne  in  the 
bosom  of  his  family,  making,  from  time  to  time,  little 
journeys  to  Marseilles  or  to  Aix,  which  kept  him  in 
communication  with  the  learned  men  of  that  region. 
But  by  this  time,  he  was  almost  twenty-nine  years  of 
age;  his  brother's  family  was  increasing,  and  the  hour 
came  when  he  was  compelled  to  make  a  career  for 
himself,  and  he  started  for  Paris  in  June,  1744. 

Among  the  letters  of  recommendation  which  he  took 
with  him  was  one  to  M.  de  Boze,  one  of  the  most  in- 
fluential of  the  Academicians,  and  the  keeper  of  the 
Cabinet  of  Medals.  The  young  abbe,  invited  to  his 
dinners,  given  on  Tuesdays  and  Wednesdays,  became 
acquainted  there  with  the  learned  men  of  the  day,  the 


TLbc  Hbbe  Bartbelem^,  411 

men  of  Letters  in  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions,  and 
witli  several  persons  of  the  great  world  who  piqued 
themselves  on  their  erudition  and  knowledge  of  art;  he 
felt  at  first  in  their  presence  something  of  the  respect 
and  emotion  that  he  had  felt  fifteen  years  earlier  on 
seeing  M.  de  la  Visclede. 

"This  profound  respect  for  men  of  Letters,"  he  says,  "  I  felt  to 
such  an  extent  in  my  youth  that  I  ever  retained  the  names  of  those  who 
sent  enigmas  to  the  Mercure.  The  result  to  me  was  quite  an  injury; 
I  admired  but  1  did  not  judge.  For  a  very  long  time  I  never  read 
a  bool<  without  acknowledging  inwardly  that  I  was  incapable  of 
making  as  good  a  one.  In  my  last  years  I  have  been  bolder  in  regard 
to  works  relating  to  research  and  to  antiquity  ;  I  had  then,  by  long 
labours,  acquired  rights  to  my  own  confidence." 

Even  supposing  that  the  abbe,  wishing  to  make  his 
narrative  lively,  exaggerates  a  little  his  veneration  and 
his  trepidation,  we  at  least  see  plainly  the  direction 
in  which  lay  his  vocation  and  the  literary  religion  that 
was,  as  it  were,  infused  into  him.  He  grew  bolder 
rapidly;  he  made  himself  known  and  liked  by  men 
who  were  more  or  less  distinguished;  and  the  more 
intelligence  they  had  themselves  the  better  he  pleased 
them.  Nature  had  done  much  for  him;  his  manner 
of  speaking  was  lively,  easy,  insinuating;  intercourse 
with  him  was  safe  and  charming.  A  contemporary, 
seeing  him  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  and  having  be- 
fore his  eyes  the  bust  that  Houdon  made  of  him,  de- 
scribes him  as  follows: 

"  He  had  a  very  tall  and  well-proportioned  figure.  It  seemed  as  if 
Nature  wanted  to  match  his  form  and  his  features  to  his  morals  and 


412  Ube  Bbl)^  JSartbelemi?, 

his  occupations.  His  face  had  an  antique  character  and  his  bust  could 
be  rightly  placed  between  those  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  It  is  the  work 
of  an  able  hand  that  knew  how  to  put  into  his  countenance  that  mix- 
ture of  gentleness,  simplicity,  kindliness,  and  grandeur  which  render 
visible,  so  to  speak,  the  soul  of  this  rare  man." 


Take  out  the  word  grandeur^  and  the  names  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  which  are  out  of  place,  and  it  remains 
true  that  the  Abbe  Barthelemy  had  a  very  fine  head, 
was  a  little  too  thin,  but  had  all  the  external  advantages 
that  attract  and  charm,  with  manners  that  made  the 
young  scholar  the  most  easy  and  natural  of  men  of  the 
world:  "The  Abbe  Barthelemy,"  wrote  Gibbon,  "is 
very  agreeable  and  has  nothing  of  the  antiquary  about 
him  but  his  erudition  ";  and  all  those  who  knew  him 
said  the  same. 

Before  he  became  celebrated  as  a  writer  by  his  Voy- 
age dujeune  Anacharsis  (which  he  did  not  publish  till 
he  was  seventy-two  years  of  age),  Barthelemy  was 
long  only  an  antiquary,  and  it  was  in  that  capacity 
that  he  gained  his  first  renown.  Arriving  in  Paris,  and 
welcomed,  as  I  have  said,  by  M.  de  Boze,  who  made 
him  his  assistant  in  the  Cabinet  of  Medals,  and  caused 
him  to  become  a  member  of  the  Academy  of  Inscrip- 
tions, he  was  forced  to  train  himself,  under  a  most 
painstaking  master,  to  extreme  accuracy  and  to  weari- 
some application.  But  nothing  ever  discourages  that 
which  comes  in  the  line  of  a  passion,  and  Barthelemy 
had  a  true  passion  for  medals,  something  of  that  sacred 
fire  which  applies  itself  to  many  different  objects,  and 


JLbc  Hbbe  Bartbelemij.  413 

is  well  known  to  all  those  who  have  become  possessed 
by  the  taste  for  collections. 

Having  succeeded  M.  de  Boze  when  the  latter  died, 
he  had  no  thought  more  dear  than  to  enrich  the  King's 
Cabinet,  thus  intrusted  to  him,  with  new  and  rare 
treasures,  and  he  was  joyful  when,  in  1755,  the  Due 
de  Choiseul  (then  Comte  de  Stainville ),  appointed 
ambassador  to  Rome,  offered  to  take  him  to  Italy,  lodge 
him  at  the  embassy  in  Rome,  and  to  facilitate  his 
journey  in  every  way.  This  was  the  beginning  of  a 
lasting  tie  that  became  closer  year  by  year,  and  was 
broken  only  by  death.  The  names  of  the  Due  and 
Duchesse  de  Choiseul  and  that  of  the  Abbe  Barthelemy 
have  become  inseparable.  There  were  grandeur  and 
magnificence  in  the  benefactions  of  M.  de  Choiseul, 
combined  with  a  rare  fund  of  delicacy;  he  won  the 
hearts  of  all  those  he  obliged.  The  Abbe  Barthelemy 
had  attraction,  charm,  constant  amenity,  a  true  and 
attaching  sensibility.  "  My  fate  "  he  said,  "is  to  have 
warm  friends;  it  is  a  happiness  of  which  I  feel  the  full 
extent." 

The  first  impression  that  he  received  on  arriving  in 
Rome  and  seeing  the  vast  wealth  of  antiquities  there 
accumulated  was  amazement,  and  something  like 
discouragement: 

"  We  can  never  hope,"  he  cries,  "  to  form  such  collections;  we  live 
in  aland  of  iron  for  antiquaries.  It  is  in  Italy  that  researches  should 
be  made;  never  shall  we  conquer  the  Romans  but  in  Rome.  I  blush 
a  hundred  times  a  day  at  the  infinitely  petty  things  that  are  in  our  in- 
finitely petty  Cabinet  of  antiques;  1  blush  that  1  showed  it  to  strangers; 


414  ^be  abbe  Bartbelem^* 

what  must  they  have  thought  of  the  interest  1  took  in  those  bronzes 
seven  or  eight  inches  high,  in  those  two  or  three  mutilated  heads  of 
which  I  wanted  them  to  admire  the  grandeur  and  the  rarity!  Why 
did  no  one  warn  me  ?  " 


Yet  he  recovered,  little  by  little,  from  this  electrical 
shock;  he  found  his  bearings;  he  selected  arid  dis- 
cerned among  the  objects  of  his  research:  "  In  the 
beginning,"  he  says,  "I  saw  Rome  through  a  petri- 
fied fog;  to-day  I  see  it  through  a  cloud  that  lets  some 
flashes  of  light  through  it."  It  was  in  devoting  him- 
self particularly  to  his  principal  object,  medals,  that 
he  succeeded,  little  by  little,  in  accumulating  treasures. 
He  delights  in  relating  the  stratagems,  the  diplomatic 
wiles,  the  manoeuvres  that  he  has  to  employ.  More 
than  one  antiquary  is  pitiless,  and  will  not  part  with 
his  possessions.  Barthelemy  is  then  obliged  to  resort 
to  the  plots  of  Ulysses: 

For  example,  there  is  in  Verona  an  antiquary  named 
Muselli,  who  has  the  medal  of  a  certain  almost  un- 
known little  king  which  Barthelemy  covets  for  his 
Cabinet,  and  which  the  possessor  will  not  give  up. 
But  this  Muselli  like  most  of  the  Italian  savants,  has  a 
great  desire  to  be  connected  in  some  way  with  the 
Academy  of  Inscriptions  in  Paris,  and  Barthelemy 
begs  M.  de  Caylus  to  negotiate  with  the  Academy  in 
favour  of  the  said  Muselli  so  far  as  to  make  him  their 
correspondent;  arranging,  however,  that  to  him,  Bar- 
thelemy, the  letters  are  to  be  sent:  "1  shall  then,"  he 
says,  "  go  to  Verona;  if  he  gives  me  the  medal,  1  will 


Ube  abbe  Bartbelemi?.  415 

give  him  hopes;  if  he  refuses  it,  I  will  make  him  fear 
my  opposition  to  his  desire;  all  this  very  politely.  It 
is  a  misfortune  for  me  that  he  knows  the  value  of  his 
treasure;  you  cannot  snatch  anything  from  Italians  if 
they  once  know  the  value  of  what  they  possess."  All 
this  is  said  merrily,  and  in  the  tone  of  a  man  of  the 
world  which  never  fails  to  accompany  the  learned  man 
in  Barthelemy  and  gently  to  put  aside  the  pedant. 

At  last,  his  harvest  is  garnered,  his  prize  is  won;  he 
feels  that  his  journey  has  not  been  mere  loss;  that  was 
his  fear  at  the  beginning ;  a  hundred  times  did  he  regret 
having  occasioned  a  useless  expense :  ' '  That  thought, " 
he  says  artlessly,  "poisoned  moments  which  I  might 
have  spent  with  more  pleasure.  But  here  I  am  now 
more  tranquil,  thanks  to  a  dozen  or  two  of  little  bits 
of  bronze.  It  is  certainly  very  senseless  to  have  set 
one's  happiness  on  the  increasing  of  a  treasure  in  which 
almost  no  one  deigns  to  take  an  interest."  It  remains 
evident,  after  reading  his  letters  from  Italy,  that,  in  spite 
of  some  success,  he  feels  a  little  lost  in  that  vast  field ; 
his  journey  has  humbled  more  than  it  has  delighted  him, 
by  revealing  to  his  mind  the  full  extent  of  much  that  he 
must  either  ignore  or  touch  superficially.  He  feels  the 
need  of  concentrating  himself  on  his  return;  of  shutting 
himself  up  while  vigour  remains,  and  not  coming  out 
of  his  retirement  till  he  can  bring  with  him  some  great 
work. 

During  this  journey  in  Italy,  I  fancy  I  see  two  in- 
stincts struggling  together  in  the  breast  of  the  Abbe 


41 6  Zbc  abbe  Bartb^lem^. 

Barthelemy :  one  is  the  pure  instinct  of  the  antiquary, 
of  the  lover  of  old  fragments,  the  zealous  collector  of 
rare  medals,  which  tells  him  to  exhaust  the  material  he 
finds  there  and  remain;  and  the  other  is  the  instinct  ot 
the  writer,  the  man  of  modern  art  and  of  style,  who,  at 
the  sight  of  these  scattered  treasures,  these  monuments 
of  a  great  past,  these  relics  of  a  vast  ruin  superseded  by 
a  brilliant  Renaissance,  feels  the  necessity  of  gathering 
himself  together,  of  returning  to  his  industrious  hive 
and  there  composing  a  work  that  shall  be  his,  his  only, 
it  was,  in  fact,  from  this  sojourn  in  Italy  that  we 
must  date  the  idea  ofthejeune  Anacharsis. 

Barthelemy  first  thought  of  making  a  Frenchman 
travel  in  Italy  about  the  time  of  Leo  X,  and  of  painting, 
by  this  means,  the  rich  and  full  Renaissance;  but,  on 
reflection,  he  decided  that  he  was  less  qualified  for  that 
subject,  which  would  draw  him  from  his  favourite  do- 
main and  throw  him  into  a  world  of  art,  of  modern 
poesy  and  painting,  into  a  whole  order  of  subjects  with 
which  he  was  only  moderately  familiar.  He  therefore 
transported  his  idea  to  Greece,  inventing  the  visit  of  a 
Scythian  to  that  country  in  the  days  of  Philip  of  Mace- 
don.  This  was  the  germ  of  his  work,  which  took  him 
thirty  years  to  prepare  and  then  to  write. 

On  his  return  from  this  journey  to  Italy  his  life  settled 
down  into  a  single  course;  he  became  inseparable  from 
the  Choiseuls  and  could  no  longer  part  his  fortunes 
from  theirs.  In  any  picture  made  of  the  society  and 
the  salons  of  the  eighteenth  century  he  must  be  pre- 


Zbc  abbe  Bartbelem^.  417 

sented  as  the  most  accomplished  type  of  the  erudite, 
social  abbe,  having  all  the  advantages  that  the  position 
implies,  and  paying  for  them  by  his  kind  offices  and 
accomplishments. 

In  every  rich  household  in  the  eighteenth  century 
there  was  alv^ays  "the  abbe,"  an  accessory  and  yet 
indispensable  personage,  convenient  for  the  master 
and  mistress  of  the  house,  answering  the  questions  of 
the  children  and  their  mothers,  keeping  an  eye  on 
the  tutor,  well-informed,  active,  domestic,  assiduous, 
amusing,  a  necessary  piece  of  furniture  in  the  country. 
I  do  not  know  who  it  was  that  wagered  he  could  go 
from  door  to  door  through  the  Faubourg  Saint-Ger- 
main asking  each  porter:  "  Has  the  abbe  come  in  ?" 
"Will  the  abbe  dine  at  home  to-day.?"  and  that  to 
these  questions  the  porter  would  answer  as  if  he  knew 
of  course  who  was  meant.  The  Abbe  Barthelemy,  by 
his  own  merit,  and  by  the  nature  of  the  sentiments 
that  bound  him  to  the  Choiseuls,  was  far  above  this 
class  of  abbe;  or  rather  he  personifies  it  to  our  eyes 
by  a  superior  and  almost  ideal  example. 

On  the  return  from  Italy,  M.  de  Choiseul  put  his 
young  wife  in  charge  of  the  abbe  to  accompany  her 
and  bring  her  to  Paris.  This  young  woman,  of  whom 
all  descriptions  agree,  was,  from  her  tenderest  years,  a 
dainty  perfection  of  good  sense,  prudence,  grace,  and 
prettiness. 

"  Mme.  de  Stainville,"  the  abbe  says  of  her,"  though  scarcely  eight- 
een years  ot  age,  enjoyed  the  deep  veneration  that  is  usually  accorded 

VOL.    I.— 27. 


4t8  Tlbe  Hbbe  Bartbelemi?. 

only  to  a  long  exercise  of  the  virtues:  all  in  her  inspired  interest,  her 
age,  her  face,  the  delicacy  of  her  health,  the  vivacity  that  animated  her 
words  and  actions,  the  desire  to  please  which  it  was  so  easy  for  her  to 
satisfy  (the  success  of  which  she  carried  to  a  husband  the  worthy 
object  of  her  tenderness  and  worship),  the  extreme  sensibility  that 
made  her  happy  or  unhappy  through  the  happiness  or  troubles  of 
others,  and  lastly,  her  purity  of  soul  that  never  allowed  her  to  suspect 
evil.  At  the  same  time,  persons  were  surprised  to  see  so  much  en- 
lightenment with  such  simplicity.  She  reflected  at  an  age  when 
others  scarcely  begin  to  think." 

The  Abbe  Barthelemy  has  on  many  occasions  por- 
trayed Mme.  de  Choiseul;  he  has  put  her  with  her 
husband  into  his  Jeune  Anacharsis  under  the  names 
of  Phedime  and  Arsame:  "  Phedime  discerns  at  a 
glance  the  different  bearings  of  a  subject;  with  a 
single  sentence  she  can  express  them.  Sometimes 
she  seems  to  remember  what  she  has  never  learned." 

He  was  very  sensitive  to  friendship,  and  very  worthy 
of  it.  He  had  many  sweet  and  charming  thoughts  upon 
it.  In  a  little  Traite  de  Morale^  written  for  the  use  of 
a  nephew  of  M.  de  Malesherbes  at  the  request  of  the 
mother,  he  shows  how  amenity  was  the  natural  bent 
of  his  character,  and  humanity  the  foundation  of  his 
soul.  He  knows  very  well  how  to  distinguish  between 
complaisance  and  friendship.  Wishing  to  show  that 
among  the  different  sorts  of  spirit  that  of  display  and 
effusiveness  is  the  most  opposed  to  friendship,  he  says: 
"  Friendship  would  get  on  better  with  that  refined  and 
delicate  spirit  which  seems  only  to  express  itself  to 
give  pleasure,  and  leaves  more  to  be  perceived  than  is 
expressed.     But  observe  that  it  pleases  only  in  taking 


Zbc  Hbbe  Bartbelem^.  419 

the  tone  of  true  feeling,  and  it  is  necessary  always  to 
make  plain  that  its  seductive  graces  are  not  the  fruit  of 
worldly  customs  or  of  the  hypocrisy  of  the  heart." 
He  desires  friendship  to  be  wholly  sincere,  wholly 
virtuous,  and  founded  on  the  love  of  honour: 
"We  need,"  he  said,  "in  friendship,  not  a  passing 
or  imaginative  fervour,  but  a  steady  and  judicious 
warmth.  When  that  warmth  has  had  time  to  in- 
sinuate itself  into  hearts,  when  proofs  have  only  rend- 
ered it  more  effectual,  then  the  choice  is  made,  then 
we  begin  to  live  in  another  ourself. "  He  speaks  with 
feeling  and  with  force.  Friendship,  and  the  continual 
solicitudes  it  brings  with  it,  which  embarrass  some 
souls,  are  delightful  to  him.  The  details  into  which 
it  must  enter  daily  never  weary  him;  far  from  causing 
him  ennui,  they  seem  to  him  a  source  of  pleasure: 

"  Let  us  consecrate  to  friendship,"  he  says,  "  all  the  moments  of 
which  other  duties  allow  us  to  dispose  ;  delicious  moments  that  come 
so  slowly,  and  go  so  fast;  in  which  all  that  is  said  is  sincere,  all  that  is 
promised  is  durable;  moments  when  hearts,  unconstrained  and  bared, 
know  how  to  give  importance  to  the  smallest  things,  and  confide  to 
one  another  without  reluctance  secrets  that  draw  their  ties  the  closer; 
moments,  in  short,  when  silence  itself  proves  that  souls  can  be  happy 
in  the  silent  presence  of  each  other;  for  this  silence  brings  neither  dis- 
taste nor  ennui.     We  say  nothing,  but — we  are  together." 

He  was  one  of  those  moderate  and  sensible  souls 
who,  amid  slow  and  patient  study  and  a  pronounced 
taste  for  social  enjoyments  and  familiar  pleasantry,  have 
within  them  a  vein  of  tenderness,  and  who,  in  their 
hours  of  revery,  feed  themselves  on  passages  from 
Euripides,  Racine,  or  Saint-Augustine. 


420  TLbc  abbe  3Bartbelem^. 

And  why  should  he  not  have  given  himself  wholly 
to  the  Choiseuls,  who  forestalled  his  slightest  desires 
with  so  much  grace  and  beneficence  ?  During  his  last 
days  in  Rome  he  saw  and  desired  to  possess  a  dozen 
little  figurines  in  terra-cotta,  which  had  recently  been 
discovered  in  a  marble  tomb;  but  the  price  demanded 
was  excessive.  He  related  this  by  chance  to  a  friend 
in  Mme.  de  Choiseul's  presence;  and  the  next  day  he 
found  the  twelve  little  figurines  on  his  table  with  no 
intimation  whence  they  came.  Such  deeds  on  the 
part  of  a  gracious  fairy  were  perpetual.  On  his  return 
to  Paris,  he  fitted  up  for  himself  a  lodging  and  a  study. 
Mme.  de  Choiseul,  aided  this  time  by  Mme.  de  Gram- 
mont  as  her  accomplice,  obtained  the  key  during  his 
absence,  and  the  philosophical  study,  decorated,  by 
the  touch  of  a  wand,  with  all  sorts  of  pretty  furniture 
and  even  bits  of  embroidery  by  their  own  hands,  was 
metamorphosed,  in  an  hour,  into  a  charming  bower. 
This  graceful  deed  was  for  the  moment  the  talk  of  all 
Paris  (November,  1762). 

In  these  years  Barthelemy  justified  the  attentions  he 
received  by  the  manner  in  which  he  treated  certain 
points  of  erudition  before  the  public  at  the  solemn  ses- 
sions of  his  Academy.  In  April,  1763,  at  the  public 
session  after  Easter,  he  read  a  dissertation  on  the  Coptic 
language : 

"  We  knew  what  it  was  to  be  beforehand,"  says  Gibbon,  "and 
every  one  blamed  the  choice  of  such  a  knotty  subject,  which  seemed 
only  suitable  for  private  meetings.     But  we  saw  with  pleasure  mingled 


Ubc  abbe  3Bartbelems«  421 

with  surprise  how  interesting  our  abbe  made  it  to  the  women  and  per- 
sons of  society  who  heard  it,  by  the  graces  of  his  style,  the  acuteness 
of  his  criticism,  and  his  correct  and  luminous  principles." 

"  The  women  themselves,"  we  find  it  stated  in  the 
Memoirs  of  Bachaumont,  "  were  delighted  with  that 
lecture,"  Here  we  come  upon  the  class  of  talent,  and 
also  upon  what  was  to  prove  the  general  defect  of  the 
Abbe  Barthelemy  in  his  Anacharsis,  namely,  rather 
too  much  condiment  in  his  erudition,  and  an  elegant 
weakening  of  antiquity  with  worldly  graces. 

He  was  too  highly  favoured  in  these  years  not  to 
rouse  envy.  During  the  ministry  of  the  Due  de  Choi- 
seul,  pensions,  benefices,  sinecures  were  poured  upon 
him  continually,  to  the  point  of  giving  him  an  annual 
revenue  of  nearly  40,000  livres.  When  he  was  named 
secretary-general  of  the  Swiss  Guard,  a  place  which 
alone  brought  him  20,000  livres,  those  present  at  a  Car- 
nival ball  a  few  days  later  beheld  a  tall,  thin,  ungainly 
man,  representing  a  caricature  of  him  masked,  and 
wearing  a  costume  partly  of  the  Swiss  Guard,  but  with 
breeches  and  a  black  cloak.  A  scene  was  acted  be- 
tween the  mask  and  a  stranger :  ' '  Who  are  you,  noble 
mask?"  asked  the  latter;  "what  profession  do  you 
belong  to,  abbe  or  guardsman?"  "To  one  or  the 
other,  whichever  you  please,"  replied  the  mask,  "  pro- 
vided it  gives  mt  }o,ooo  livres  per  year."  The  Due  de 
Choiseul  was  very  angry  and  wanted  to  discover  the 
actor.  The  abbe  recovered  the  good  opinion  of  the 
public  by  his  moderation,  and  by  resigning  a  small 


42  2  Ube  Hbbe  Bartbelemg^ 

pension  which  he  received  from  the  Mercure.  This 
slight  sacrifice,  made  at  the  right  moment  and  with- 
out effort,  pacified  the  Encyclopaedists,  with  whom 
Barthelemy  was  not  always  on  good  terms  because  he 
did  not  belong  to  them. 

After  the  fall  of  the  Due  de  Choiseul,  when  the  office 
of  colonel-general  of  the  Swiss  Guard  was  taken  from 
him,  Barthelemy  sent  in  his  resignation  as  secretary- 
general;  and  he  persisted  in  it  in  spite  of  the  efforts 
made  to  get  him  to  withdraw  it.  They  finally  gave 
him,  without  his  requesting  it,  a  pension  of  10,000 
livres  on  the  office  he  resigned.  He  was  thus  enabled 
to  live  with  the  noble  exiles  at  Chanteloup,  be  faithful, 
as  he  should  be,  to  friendship,  and  yet  have  a  hand- 
some revenue,  which  he  disposed  of  generously  and 
without  ostentation. 

If  the  letters,  or  rather  the  gazettes,  which  the  Abbe 
Barthelemy  wrote  to  Mme.  Du  Deffand  from  Chante- 
loup had  been  preserved,  letters  which  gave  an  ac- 
count of  their  doings  from  day  to  day,  we  should  have 
true  memoirs  of  the  private  life  of  the  great  world  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  We  can  get  some  idea  of  the 
correspondence  from  a  little  mock-heroic  poem  by 
Barthelemy,  entitled  La  Chanteloupee,  which  is  other- 
wise very  frivolous.  We  find  in  the  Correspondence 
of  Horace  Walpole  a  remark  about  the  Abbe  Bar- 
thelemy and  a  word  of  praise  that  needs  some 
explanation.  One  of  Walpole's  friends,  General  Con- 
way,  being  in  France  and,  in  spite  of  his  expressed 


XCbe  Hbbe  Bartbelemy.  423 

desire,  not  succeeding  in  making  the  acquaintance  of 
the  Due  and  Duchesse  de  Choiseul  who  were  little  in- 
clined to  it,  Walpole  writes  to  him: 

"Though  the  Choiseuls  hold  themselves  aloof  from 
you,  I  hope  that  their  Abbe  Barthelemy  is  not  subjected 
to  the  same  quarantine.  Besides  great  knowledge  he 
has  infinite  wit  and  poltssonnerie,  and  he  is  one  of  the 
best  sort  of  men  that  there  is  in  the  world." 

The  word  polissonnerie  is  written  in  French  and 
underlined.  Walpole  evidently  did  not  fully  under- 
stand what  the  word  signifies;  it  is  probable  that  he 
meant  to  speak  of  the  gay  and  lively  playfulness  that 
the  abbe  showed  in  a  drawing-room.  At  supper  with 
Mme.  Du  Deffand,  or  in  writing  to  her  of  the  doings 
at  Chanteloup,  this  abbe  of  good  society  had  a  slight 
touch  of  Cresset  about  him. 

The  actual  facts  of  the  Abbe  Barthelemy's  merits  as 
an  antiquary,  and  before  the  publication  of  his  Ana- 
charsis,  escape  my  search;  what  can  be  said  in  general 
is,  that  he  rendered  true  service  to  the  knowledge  of 
medals  [and  the  coins  of  antiquity];  that  he  contributed 
to  raise  them  from  the  condition  of  mere  curiosities, 
and  to  make  them  one  of  the  regular  and  consecutive 
supports  of  history.  In  sixty  years  of  practice,  more 
than  four  hundred  thousand  medals  passed  through 
his  hands.  Bringing  to  this  study,  as  to  all  those  he 
undertook,  a  philosophical  mind,  he  nevertheless  pre- 
served himself  from  what  was  called  the  philosophy  of 
the  century;  and,  as  much,  perhaps,  from  a  sense  of 


424  Xlbe  Hbbe  Bartbelem^, 

propriety  as  from  reflection,  he  at  all  times  considered 
the  attacks  on  religion,  in  which  the  brilliant  men  and 
the  principal  writers  around  him  indulged,  as  fatal 
and  ruinous. 

After  the  death  of  the  Due  de  Choiseul  in  1785,  he 
lived  in  Paris,  dividing  his  time  between  his  Cabinet 
of  Medals,  his  Academy  and  a  few  salons,  that  of 
Mme.  de  Choiseul  being  his  centre.  He  carefully 
avoided  all  quarrels  and  disturbances;  we  find  him 
advising  Walpole,  in  a  certain  case,  to  give  no  pretext 
for  war  to  Voltaire,  He,  himself,  has  the  honour,  I 
believe,  of  not  being  once  mentioned  in  the  Works  of 
that  monarch  and  literary  despot  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  When,  at  the  age  of  seventy,  his  friends 
advised  him  no  longer  to  put  off  the  publication  of  his 
Jeune  Anacharsis,  the  work  of  his  whole  life,  he 
hesitated  long;  and  when  he  finally  decided  to  let  it 
appear,  in  1788,  that  is  to  say  on  the  eve  of  the  States- 
General,  his  hope  was  that  the  attention  of  the  public, 
being  occupied  elsewhere,  would  turn  slowly  and  only 
little  by  little  to  the  book,  and  therefore  that  it  would 
have  neither  a  success  nor  a  failure:  "1  wished,"  he 
says,  "that  it  might  slide  silently  into  the  world." 

In  what  1  have  thus  far  said,  I  have  sought  to  pre- 
sent the  Abbe  Barthelemy  in  his  surroundings  and 
general  mode  of  life;  and  to  show  the  mild  and  tem- 
pered distinction  of  his  nature;  by  so  doing  it  becomes 
easier  to  speak  of  his  work. 

He  wanted  for  his  Jeune  Anacharsis,  as  I  have  said, 


Ube  Bbbe  Bartbelems*  425 

a  gentle,  almost  silent  success,  something  like  the  man- 
ner in  which  it  had  been  composed;  and  it  obtained, 
from  the  very  day  it  was  published,  a  dazzling  success. 
Yet,  the  States-General  were  just  convoked  and  the 
year  1789  was  opening  in  the  midst  of  boundless  expec- 
tation. Sieyes  had  published  his  pamphlet,  "What 
is  the  Tiers-Etat  ?  "  Political  discussion  was  becoming 
inflamed  on  all  sides;  but,  amid  the  soughing  of  that 
impetuous,  rising  wind  which  was  not  yet  a  hurricane, 
the  French  Academy  was  receiving  the  Chevalier  de 
Boufflers;  the  Abbe  Delille  recited  in  public  sessions 
with  applause,  portions  of  a  poem  on  Imagination,  and 
the  young  Anacharsis  entered  the  port  of  Athens  with 
all  sail  set.  It  was  the  last  great  literary  success  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  at  the  moment  when  the 
whole  of  French  society  was  issuing  from  its  happy 
lake,  its  peaceful  Mediterranean,  through  unknown 
straits,  whence  the  Genius  of  the  new  Era  was  to 
launch  it  with  a  powerful  hand  upon  the  ocean. 

With  his  elegant  and  polished  young  Greek,  who 
to-day  seems  to  us  so  cold,  the  Abbe  Barthelemy  ob- 
tained a  success  like  that  of  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre. 
Men  of  the  world,  the  elite,  and  also  the  people  of  Let- 
ters, and  women,  were  all  seized,  in  an  instant,  with 
enthusiasm.  Mme.  de  Krudner,  who  at  that  date  was 
still  only  an  ambassadress  and  a  pretty  woman,  copied 
and  learned  by  heart  long  passages  of  Anacharsis; 
Mme.  de  Stael,  who  had  just  written  her  Lettres  sur 
Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  and  who  was  dawning  into 


426  Ube  Hbbe  Bartbelemg. 

celebrity,  addressed  to  the  abbe  at  a  supper  couplets 
that  sounded  the  names  of  Sappho  and  Homer.  1  find  a 
quantity  of  verses  addressed  by  amateurs  to  the  learned 
abbe,  among  them  some  to  the  air  of  Prends,  ma 
Phillis.  In  short,  the  success,  save  for  a  few  isolated 
protestations,  was  sudden  and  universal.  Frenchmen 
were  grateful  to  an  author  who  had  continually  thought 
of  them  while  painting  Athenians,  and  they  applauded 
enthusiastically  the  gratifying  resemblance. 

The  defects  and  the  good  qualities  of  the  book  are 
fully  explained  by  the  manner  in  which  it  was  com- 
posed, and  by  the  style  of  mind  of  the  writer.  At  the 
time  when  he  conceived  the  idea  of  his  work  Bar- 
thelemy  had  just  read  the  ancient  authors;  he  then  re- 
read them,  pen  in  hand,  "  noting  down  on  cards  all 
the  points  that  threw  light  on  the  nature  of  the  govern- 
ments, the  habits  and  morals,  and  laws  of  the  people, 
the  opinions  of  philosophers."  It  was  these  precise 
and  careful  notes  that  he  set  himself  to  rearrange 
and  unite  by  an  ingenious  plot  and  a  pleasing  narrative. 
"  Antiquity,"  he  thought,  "  is  only  a  study  of  various 
accounts.  The  more  we  see  of  monuments,  the  more 
texts  we  have  at  hand,  the  better  we  are  able  to  explain 
them  one  by  the  other."  Here  we  see  his  method, 
which  was  that  of  collection  and  mosaic. 

Having  chosen  his  young  Scythian  traveller,  to  make 
him  talk  and  judge  of  Greece  in  the  days  of  Epami- 
nondas  and  Philip  of  Macedon,  he  takes  much  trouble 
to  introduce  questions  that  the  sight  of  Greece,  at  that 


XTbe  Bbbe  Bartbelem^.  427 

time,  would  not  have  roused;  but  he  does  it  to  elude 
and  adroitly  set  aside  certain  other  questions,  and  to 
produce  a  sort  of  rigid  appearance  of  truth,  for  which, 
to-day,  we  do  not  thank  him.  Nevertheless,  those  who 
in  their  youth  took  pleasure  (and  1  am  one  of  them  )  in 
reading  Anacharsis,  have,  from  duty  and  gratitude, 
certain  favourable  reasons  to  present. 

In  Barthelemy's  work  there  is  a  quality  which  we 
value  too  little  in  our  day — namely,  composition,  con- 
nection, unity.  The  rather  lively  and  elegant  Introduc- 
tion which  epitomises  the  history  of  the  earlier  ages  of 
Greece,  makes  the  frontal  of  the  abbe's  monument. 
The  yqyage — the  Journey,  properly  so-called — begins 
joyfully  and  with  emotion,  by  a  visit  to  Epaminondas, 
the  most  perfect  of  ancient  heroes;  it  ends,  in  the  last 
chapter,  with  a  portrait  of  the  young  Alexander:  the 
whole  narrative  is  enclosed  between  that  first  visit  in 
Thebes,  where  the  subject  of  Greece  appears  in  all  its 
glory,  and  the  battle  of  Cherongea,  at  which  perished 
the  liberties  of  Greece.  Within  these  confines  we 
have  many  instructive  digressions,  returns  into  ancient 
history;  conversations  in  libraries;  erudite  but  not  per- 
plexing dissertations;  meetings  with  celebrated  men, 
who  are  painted  with  a  good  deal  of  truth  and  char- 
acter; chapters  that  are  quite  charming  in  their  tem- 
pered style,  such  as  the  visit  made  to  Xenophon  at 
Scillus.  In  a  word,  though  the  current  in  Anacharsis 
is  never  rapid,  it  suffices  to  carry  along  a  reader  who 
is  not  too  impatient,  and  who  will  pardon  a  lack  of 


428  XTbe  Bbbe  Bartbelemi?. 

vigour  and  originality  for  the  sake  of  elegance  and 
sweetness  combined  with  accuracy. 

Barthelemy  has  nothing  of  Montesquieu  in  his  view 
of  Greece.  "  Every  author  must  follow  his  own  plan," 
he  said;  "  it  did  not  enter  into  mine  to  send  a  traveller 
into  Greece  to  take  them  my  thoughts,  but  to  bring 
back  theirs  to  me  as  much  as  possible."  It  is  a  ques- 
tion, however,  whether  the  thoughts  of  the  Greeks, 
expressed  by  them  and  translated  to  us  without  pre- 
vious explanation,  are  sufficiently  suited  to  our  use. 
We  could  wish  that  instead  of  minutely  describing  the 
Constitutions  and  the  government  of  Athens,  Bar- 
thelemy had  made  us  feel  more  vividly  the  marked 
differences  between  them  and  modern  society — 
slavery,  on  which  they  were  founded,  oppression  of 
conquered  races,  civic  rights  reserved  exclusively  to  a 
small  number  of  the  inhabitants,  in  the  very  place 
where,  as  we  are  told,  the  multitude  ruled. 

Barthelemy,  by  introducing  a  personage  of  the  past, 
and  making  him  constantly  speak,  cut  himself  off  from 
the  resource  of  modern  and  really  statesmanlike  con- 
siderations; but,  had  he  spoken  in  his  own  name,  he 
would  also  have  ignored  them;  they  did  not  enter  into 
the  nature  of  his  mind.  He  kept  to  mundane  and 
superficial  analogies,  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  to  the  Par- 
isian resemblances  which  the  names  of  Aspasia  or 
Alcibiades  suggested;  he  never  cut  to  the  depths  in  his 
comparisons.  We  find  in  Grimm's  Correspondance 
a  few  pages  written  after  reading  Anacharsis,  which 


Ube  Hbbe  Bartbelems.  429 

treat  of  the  government  of  Athens;  that  short  chapter, 
on  the  eve  of  the  French  Revolution,  says  more  about 
that  government  than  all  the  notes  so  minutely  dove- 
tailed together  by  Barthelemy.  After  stating  the 
principal  features  of  the  government  of  Athens  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Athenian  people,  after  pointing  out 
the  influence,  often  sovereign,  of  their  greatest  men, 
Themistocles,  Pericles,  etc.,  Grimm  (or  the  writer 
of  the  chapter,  whoever  he  was)  boldly  drew  this 
conclusion: 

"It  is  therefore  permissible  to  say  that  the  most 
democratic  democracy  that  ever  has  been,  perhaps,  in 
the  world,  had  no  more  certain  means  of  sustaining 
itself  than  to  cease  at  times  to  be  so;  and  that  each 
time  it  was  least  democratic  in  fact  it  enjoyed  a  more 
brilliant  fortune  and  one  more  truly  to  be  envied." 

Barthelemy  has  none  of  the  comprehensive  views  of 
a  statesman  and  a  philosopher;  nor  has  he  those  of  a 
painter.  His  style,  as  I  have  said,  has  gentleness,  and 
in  places  emotion  and  sensibility.  I  could  quote 
many  passages  carefully  worked  up  and  graceful  in 
effect;  such,  for  instance,  as  the  famous  description  of 
the  spring-time  at  Delos:  "In  the  happy  climate 
where  1  dwell,  spring  is  like  the  dawn  of  a  beautiful 
day."  But  even  there,  we  feel  it  is  a  theme,  treated 
and  caressed  deliberately  by  a  skilful,  polished  pen, 
rather  than  a  picture  grasped  by  the  imagination  or 
vividly  seized  from  nature.  It  is  the  work  of  a  de- 
scriptive Isocrates,  and  nothing  more. 


43°  ^be  abbe  Bartbelem^. 

Chateaubriand,  in  his  first,  confused  work,  his  Essai 
sur  les  Revolutions,  started,  in  a  way,  from  the  Voyage 
du  Jeune  Anacharsis  to  make  continual  comparisons 
of  antiquity  with  the  modern  world;  but,  after  the  first 
steps  in  the  tracks  of  his  predecessor,  how  he  makes 
us  feel  that  he  penetrates  far  beyond  him!  His  bril- 
liant and  energetic  talent  begins  at  once,  and  at  alt 
hazards,  to  give  sword-thrusts  through  his  subject, 
and  from  that  sword  the  lightnings  dart.  It  would 
seem  that  all  new  talent,  new  genius,  must  enter  thus 
into  subjects  sword  in  hand,  like  Renaud  into  the  en- 
chanted forest;  and  that  it  needs  to  strike  boldly  until 
it  has  broken  the  charm :  the  conquest  of  the  true  and 
of  the  beautiful  is  at  this  cost. 

After  Chateaubriand  had  visited  Greece  she  had  a 
painter  among  us.  I  do  not  say  that  he  painted 
simply,  or  in  the  manner  that  she  herself,  in  her  best 
days,  would  have  preferred;  I  say  only  that  with 
the  means  and  system  of  colour  which  were  his,  he 
imparts  to  us  vividly  the  sensation  of  Greece.  He  ar- 
rives in  Athens;  he  mounts  at  once  to  the  Acropolis; 
like  a  conqueror  he  chooses  his  camp;  he  establishes 
his  sovereign  point  of  view.  Re-read  that  page  of  his 
Itineraire.  Thence  he  describes  the  hills,  the  monu- 
ments about  him;  he  evokes,  he  re-creates  in  idea  the 
ancient  city,  the  theatre  resounding  with  applause,  the 
fleets  issuing  from  the  Piraeus,  the  days  of  Salamis  or 
of  Delos.  There  is  nothing  more  glorious  under  the 
sun   nor  more   luminous  than   that   picture.      With 


TLbc  Hbbe  JBartbelemg.  431 

Barthelemy,  with  his  young  Anacharsis,  who  is 
supposed  to  arrive  for  the  first  time  in  Athens,  we 
have  nothing  of  the  kind;  we  follow  him  through  the 
streets,  one  by  one,  but  without  a  coup  d'oeil.  We 
feel  that  our  guide  is  troubled,  he  finds  his  way  with 
effort;  at  last  we  reach  the  steps  that  lead  to  the 
Acropolis;  slowly  we  mount,  and  wearily.  The  gene- 
ral coup  d'oeil  comes  too  late,  and  is  feeble.  All  this 
tells  us  that  Barthelemy  has  read,  but  not  seen. 

I  do  not  wish,  however,  to  lay  too  much  stress  on 
his  defects;  we  feel  them  too  much  in  our  day;  but  in 
his  day  he  had  grace  and  a  relative  usefulness.  The 
idea  that  men  have  formed  of  Greece,  of  that  celebrated 
literature  and  country,  has  not  always  been  the  same 
in  France;  it  has  passed  in  the  course  of  three  centuries 
through  many  variations  and  vicissitudes.  If,  formerly, 
we  made  ourselves  too  elTeminate  and  smiling  an 
image  of  ancient  Greece,  are  we  not  making  too  hard 
and  savage  a  one  to-day  ?  In  the  sixteenth  century,  on 
the  morrow  of  the  Renaissance  and  in  the  intoxication 
that  followed  it,  our  French  poets  imitated  the  Greeks 
without  sobriety,  and  without  taste;  they  missed  the 
grandeur  through  their  very  excess  of  imitation;  they 
succeeded  in  rendering  adequately  only  the  lesser  au- 
thors, the  graceful  odes,  the  Anacreonics,  a  few  idylls 
fallen  from  the  treasury  of  the  "Anthology."  Amyot 
by  devoting  himself  to  Longinus  and  Plutarch,  propa- 
gated the  literature  of  Greece  far  better  by  making  its 
prose  more  liked. 


432  Ube  Hbbe  Bartbelemi?. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  Greece  was  not  as  well 
comprehended,  nor  as  faithfully  pictured  as  we  imagine ; 
Boileau,  who  did,  strictly  speaking,  understand  Lon- 
ginus  and  Homer,  was,  nevertheless,  far  more  Latin 
than  he  was  Greek.  Racine,  imitating  with  genius 
and  drawing  his  inspiration  from  his  own  heart,  repro- 
duced from  the  old  tragic  masterpieces  nothing,  if  I 
may  say  so,  but  their  pathetic  and  sentimental  beauties, 
which  he  sought  to  assimilate  with  French  elegances. 
Fenelon  alone,  without  thinking  of  copying  or  of  in- 
venting, and  solely  from  a  natural  simplicity  of  taste, 
found  Greece  beneath  his  pen  and  easily  reproduced  it. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre, 
without  ever  having  studied  the  Greek  language,  is  the 
one  who,  on  certain  of  his  pages,  has  divined  and  best 
revealed  the  Greek  genius.  Andre  Chenier  attained  to 
a  perception  of  Greece,  by  race,  by  study,  and  by  talent, 
and  he  takes  us  there,  even  into  many  a  by-way.  But 
before  he  was  known,  before  his  Elegies,  confided  to 
love  or  to  friendship,  could  be  repeated,  after  his  death, 
by  the  lips  of  admirers,  a  growing  taste,  more  or  less 
intelligent,  for  the  antique  had  sprung  up  at  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth  century;  and  it  was  that  taste,  I  might 
almost  say  that  fashion,  which  Le  Voyage  du  Jeune 
Anacharsis  fostered  and  quickened.  There  was  a 
moment  when  Greece,  through  the  Abbe  Barthelemy, 
was  the  rage  in  all  Parisian  salons  and  boudoirs.  We 
find  in  the  Memoirs  of  Mme.  Vigee-Lebrun  (the  grace- 
ful painter)  the  story  of  a  supper  improvised  after  a 


Zbc  abbe  JSartbelemg.  433 

reading  of  Anacharsis;  all  the  guests  were  draped  in 
Greek  costumes:  even  the  cooking  had  a  savour  of 
antiquity.  A  cake  was  served  made  with  the  honey 
and  raisins  of  Corinth;  they  drank  the  wine  of  Cyprus; 
they  even  tried,  I  think,  a  Lacedemonian  broth.  Le 
Brun-Pindare  recited  imitations  of  Anacreon. 

Those  imitations  of  Le  Brun  are  more  Greek  than 
Barthelemy  permitted  himself  to  be.  When  he  had  a 
passage  from  Sappho  or  Sophocles  to  translate  into 
verse  for  his  Voyage,  he  had  recourse  to  the  muse  of 
the  Abbe  Delille.  The  Greece  of  the  Abbe  Barthelemy 
corresponds  well,  in  fact,  with  what  appears  to  be  the 
Roman  country  in  the  Georgiques  of  the  other  accom- 
plished abbe.  The  literary  usefulness  of  the  two  was 
of  the  same  order  and  the  same  kind. 

Chateaubriand,  Paul-Louis  Courier,  and  Fauriel  have, 
since  then,  sufficiently  corrected  us  of  those  ideas  of 
Greece,  redolent  of  the  vicinity  of  Chanteloup,  Erme- 
nonville,  and  Moulin-Joli.  For  some  time  past  another 
Greece  has  become  the  fashion,  a  Greece  more  com- 
plete, they  assure  us,  more  real,  better  based  upon  the 
original;  often,  however,  too  wanting  in  elegance.  I 
applaud  with  all  my  heart  such  importations  when  they 
are  faithful  and  conscientious;  telling  myself,  at  the 
same  time,  that  they  seem  to  proclaim,  by  this  looking 
backward,  a  certain  famine  in  the  present,  and  that  they 
must  not  be  prolonged.  The  conclusions  that  1  draw 
from  this  long  series  of  attempts,  which  have,  each 
in  turn,  gone  to  extremes,  seldom  reaching  the  exact 

VOL.  I. — 28. 


434  XEbe  Bbbe  Bartbelem^, 

point,  are  that  we  cannot  transplant  one  literature  into 
another,  nor  the  genius  of  one  race  and  language  into 
the  genius  of  a  different  people;  that  to  know  Greece 
and  the  Greeks  well,  we  should  read  them  much  and 
say  but  little — unless  with  those  who  read  them  also; 
and  that  to  draw  something  from  them  into  the  cur- 
rent usage  of  our  day,  the  surest  way  is  to  have  talent 
and  imagination  in  French. 

If  the  Abbe  Barthelemy  had  had  more  of  that  natural 
originality,  of  that  living  inspiration,  we  could  pardon 
him  certain  infidelities  in  execution.  In  spite  of  all 
his  care,  in  spite  of  his  determination  not  to  take  one 
step  without  his  erudite  notes,  his  book  must  be  con- 
sidered, at  least  in  certain  parts,  a  modern  and  per- 
sonal production.  It  was  thus  that,  towards  the  end, 
during  the  sojourn  at  Delos,  he  could  not  refrain  from 
giving  himself  free  rein:  the  man  is  revealed;  he  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  Philocles  his  own  ideas  on  happi- 
ness, on  society,  on  friendship;  he  inserts,  by  extracts, 
his  former  little  treatise  on  Morals  that  he  wrote,  many 
years  earlier,  for  the  nephew  of  M.  de  Malesherbes. 
We  all  know  that  he  sang  the  praises  of  M.  and  Mme. 
de  Choiseul  in  his  work,  under  the  names  of  Arsame 
and  Phedime;  and  it  is  noticeable  that  he  praises  them 
at  three  different  periods:  in  the  first  chapter,  in  the 
last  chapter  but  one,  and  in  the  middle  and  very  heart 
of  his  work;  thus  distributing,  intentionally,  these  dear 
parts  of  his  soul  into  the  principal  sections  of  his  life- 
long work.     When  Barthelemy  published  the  book, 


TLbc  Bbbe  Bartbelemi?,  435 

M.  de  Choiseul  was  dead;  Mme.  de  Choiseul  still 
lived  and  was  destined  to  survive  the  friend  wiio 
lauded  her  so  delicately. 

The  yoyage  dujeune  Anacharsis  had  been  published 
some  months  and  its  success  had  mounted  to  the 
clouds;  a  place  became  vacant  in  the  French  Academy 
by  the  death  of  the  grammarian  Beauzee,  and  Barthe- 
lemy,  chosen  unanimously  to  succeed  him,  was  re- 
ceived at  the  public  session  on  Saint  Louis's  day,  August, 
1789.  The  Chevalier  de  Boufflers  replied  to  him,  and 
took  the  honours  of  the  session  by  a  brilliant  analysis 
of  the  Jeune  Anacharsis,  whose  author  he  compared 
to  Orpheus.  In  Barthelemy's  speech  certain  neo- 
logisms attracted  notice.  He  said,  in  speaking  of  the 
States-General,  and  the  hopes,  already  clouded,  to 
which  they  had  given  birth  :  "  France  .  .  .  sees 
her  representatives  ranged  around  the  throne,  whence 
are  descending  words  of  consolation  that  have  never 
before  fallen  from  such  a  height."  The  singularity 
of  that  sentence,  according  to  Grimm,  was  much  ap- 
plauded. Barthelemy  inaugurated  the  parliamentary 
style.  In  another  place  he  said,  lauding  the  invention 
of  printing,  and  sacrificing  slightly  to  the  enthusiastic 
ideas  of  the  moment:  "  Eternal  day  has  dawned,  and 
its  effulgence,  becoming  ever  brighter,  will  penetrate 
successively  all  climes." 

Barthelemy  must  have  had,  at  the  bottom  of  his 
heart,  less  ease  and  confidence  in  auguring  good  for 
the  future.     It  was  he  who  said,  in  a  letter  of  Calli- 


436  XCbe  Bbbe  IBartbelemg. 

medon  to  Anacharsis,  speaking  of  popular  prejudices 
and  superstitions:  "My  dear  Anacharsis,  when  we 
say  that  an  age  is  enlightened,  that  means  that  more 
ideas  are  found  in  certain  towns  than  in  others;  and 
that  in  those  the  principal  class  of  citizens  is  better 
educated  than  it  once  was."  As  for  the  multitude, 
"  not  excepting,"  he  said,  "that  of  Athens,"  he  be- 
lieved it  almost  incorrigible  and  little  perfectible, 
adding  with  discouragement:  "Never  doubt  it:  men 
have  two  favourite  passions  that  philosophy  cannot 
destroy — that  of  error,  and  that  of  slavery."  While 
thinking  thus  he  was  not  misanthropic;  nor  was  he 
inclined  to  blacken  human  nature.  "  In  general,"  he 
said,  "  men  have  less  wickedness  than  weakness  and 
inconstancy." 

The  events  of  the  Revolution  came,  blow  after  blow, 
to  sadden  his  heart,  and  destroy  the  structure,  hitherto 
so  secure,  of  his  fortune.  Until  then  he  had  led  the 
most  well-arranged  and  comfortable  of  existences;  he 
now  saw  it  daily  fall  to  pieces,  bit  by  bit,  and  escape 
him.  He  had  the  right  spirit  to  stifle  his  own  com- 
plaints, reflecting  on  the  oppression  of  all  and  the 
common  calamity: 

"  I  speak  to  you  only  of  literature,"  he  writes  to  M.  de  Choiseul- 
Gouffier  in  March,  1792,  "  because  all  other  subjects  are  grievous  and 
torturing.  I  turn  my  mind  from  them  as  much  as  possible.  We  are 
at  a  point  where  we  cannot  think  of  the  past  nor  of  the  future,  and 
scarcely  of  the  present.  1  go  to  the  Academies,  and  to  very  few 
houses,  sometimes  to  solitary  promenades;  and  when  night  comes  I 
say  to  myself  :  '  There  is  another  day  gone  by.'  " 


XTbe  Hbbe  JBartbelemi?.  437 

Soon  the  Academies,  his  true  homes,  failed  him ;  they 
were  abolished.  Nothing  remained  to  him,  except  his 
Cabinet  of  Medals.  But  such  sanctuaries,  in  revolu- 
tionary days,  are  not  inviolable  or  sacred.  In  all  public 
establishments  where  a  certain  number  01  men  are  em- 
ployed, there  is  always  one,  usually  of  inferior  rank, 
who  has  piled  up,  during  years  of  silence,  heaps  of  gall 
and  envy,  and  when  the  day  of  revolution  comes,  that 
man  will  rise  against  the  others,  who  may  not  even 
have  known  him  until  then,  and  become  their  enemy 
and  denouncer.  This  is  what  happened  at  the  Biblio- 
theque  du  Roi.  An  employe,  named  Tobiezen-Dubi, 
denounced  all  his  superiors,  and  his  information  was 
accepted.  Barthelemy  was  taken,  September  2,  1793, 
to  the  prison  of  the  Madelonnettes. 

Mme.  de  Choiseul,  as  soon  as  she  received  the  news, 
bestirred  herself  and  took  steps  to  influence  the  repre- 
sentative Courtois,  who  went  to  the  Committee  of 
Public  Safety.  There  he  pleaded  earnestly  for  the  in- 
offensive old  man,  whose  literary  success,  applauded 
by  all,  was  still  so  recent.  He  found  an  echo  to  his 
words  on  all  sides,  with  one  solitary  opposing  voice; 
that  of  an  author,  formerly  much  protected  at  Court, 
Laignelot,  who  had  written  the  tragedy  of  Agis  some 
years  before  the  publication  and  succ&ss  oi  Anacharsis, 
and  who  had  since  then  nurtured  a  professional  ieal- 
ousy  of  it.  Barthelemy  left  the  prison  after  a  confine- 
ment of  only  sixteen  hours. 

The  Minister  of  the  Interior,  Pare,  in  an  honourable 


438  XTbe  Hbbe  Bartbelem^. 

letter  ( written  in  the  style  oi  Anacharsis ),  hastened  to 
inform  the  old  man,  that  in  order  to  atone  for  that  mo- 
mentary severity,  he  was  appointed  director-general  of 
the  Bibliotheque.  Barthelemy  was  touched,  but  he 
declined  the  office;  he  was  satisfied  to  remain  among 
his  medals:  he  even  returned,  at  this  close  of  his  life, 
to  his  favourite  study  with  that  renewal  of  love  for  it 
which  many  an  old  man  feels  for  the  first  occupations 
of  his  youth.  But  the  springs  of  life  were  worn  out  in 
him.  It  was  noticed  that  the  desire  to  please,  "which 
was  perhaps  his  dominant  passion,"  abandoned  him 
gradually;  an  habitual  gloom  enveloped  his  soul;  the 
Revolution  seemed  to  him,  and  he  so  called  it,  a  "re- 
velation," which  disconcerted  all  the  moderately  in- 
dulgent ideas  he  had  hitherto  formed  of  human  nature. 
Friendship  alone  and  the  thought  of  Mme.  de  Choiseul 
still  brightened  him,  and  his  last  care,  in  his  last  days, 
was  for  her,  desiring  to  spare  her  the  emotion  that  the 
news  of  his  condition  would  cause  her. 

Mme.  de  Choiseul,  after  the  death  of  her  husband  in 
1785,  retired  to  a  convent  in  the  rue  du  Bac;  chiefly  to 
economise  in  order  to  pay  his  debts  and  thus  protect 
his  memory.  After  the  suppression  of  the  convents, 
and  under  the  Directory,  she  lived  in  an  entresol  of  the 
Perigord  mansion  in  the  rue  de  Lille,  where  she  died 
in  November,  1801,  under  the  Consulate,  surviving  her 
friend  six  years. 

The  Abbe  Barthelemy  died  in  April,  1795,  in  his 
eightieth  year.     At  one  of  the  sessions  of  the  Con- 


Zbc  Hbbe  JBartbelemg.  439 

vention  that  followed  his  death,  Dusault,  the  former 
friend  of  Jean-Jacques  and  the  translator  of  Juvenal, 
mounted  the  tribune  and  pronounced  a  Eulogy  upon 
him,  in  which  he  recommended  the  nephews  of  the 
deceased  to  the  care  of  the  nation.  "  Barthelemy,"  he 
said,  in  the  sentimental  language  of  the  day,  through 
which  a  sincere  affection  made  itself  felt, 

"  Barthelemy  was  an  excellent  man  in  all  respects.  Those  who  knew 
him  knew  not  which  to  admire  most,  his  immortal  Anacharsis,  or 
the  whole  tenor  of  his  life.  A  single  remark  of  his  discloses  the  sweet- 
ness of  his  philanthropic  soul:  '  Why  is  it  not  given  to  a  mortal,'  he 
exclaimed,  '  to  be  able  to  bequeath  happiness  ?  ' " 

To  the  shocking  maxim  of  loving  our  friends  as 
though  we  might  some  day  hate  them,  Barthelemy 
liked  to  substitute  another,  more  human,  more  con- 
soling, from  one  of  his  ancient  authors:  "  Hate  your 
enemies  as  though  you  were  some  day  to  love  them. " 


Xouia  XV. 


441 


Xouis  XV. 

LOUIS  XV,  though  endowed  with  a  noble  pre- 
sence, and  many  apparent  graces,  showed  him- 
self, from  his  earliest  years,  the  weakest  and 
most  timid  of  beings.  It  has  often  been  said — but 
never  often  enough,  that  his  was  the  most  vacant,  the 
most  contemptible,  the  most  cowardly,  of  the  hearts 
of  kings.  Nothing  is  better  fitted  to  make  known 
his  moral  nature  than  certain  letters  written  by  Mme. 
de  Tencin  to  the  Due  de  Richelieu  during  the  year 

1745. 

Informed  by  her  brother,  the  cardinal,  of  all  that 
went  on  at  the  King's  Council,  this  clever  and  in- 
triguing woman  reports  it  to  the  Due  de  Richelieu, 
then  with  the  army  in  Holland.  Only  her  own 
sentences,  given  verbatim,  can  fully  expose  the  opin- 
ion she  entertained  of  the  king. 

"  Versailles,  June  22,  1743 — You  ought,  I  think,  to  write  to  Mme. 
de  Chateauroux,  and  tell  her  to  try  to  drag  the  king  out  of  the  torpor 
he  is  in  about  public  affairs.  What  my  brother  has  been  able  to  say 
to  him  on  that  subject  is  useless:  it  is,  as  he  sent  you  word,  like  talk- 
ing to  a  rock.  I  cannot  conceive  how  a  man  can  wish  to  be  nil 
when  he  could  be  something.  No  one  but  you  could  conceive  the 
point  to  which  things  have  now  come.  What  passes  in  his  kingdom 
seems  not  to  concern  him;  nothing   affects  him;  in  the  Council  he 

443 


444  XOUlS  XV. 

is  absolutely  indifferent;  he  assents  to  whatever  is  laid  before  him. 
Verily,  it  is  enough  to  drive  any  one  to  desperation  to  have  to  do  with 
such  a  man.  Whatever  the  case  may  be,  his  apathetic  nature  leads 
him  to  the  side  on  which  there  is  least  trouble,  though  it  may  be  the 
worst  side.  .  .  .  The  news  from  Bavaria  is  bad. 
They  say  the  king  avoids  being  told  what  takes  place,  and  says  it  is 
better  to  know  nothing  than  to  hear  disagreeable  things.  Fine  sang- 
froid ix\i\y\" 

Would  the  king  go,  or  would  he  not  go  to  the 
army  ?  A  whole  system  of  machinery  had  to  be  pre- 
pared and  set  in  motion  to  effect  it: 

"  My  brother,"  writes  Mme.de  Tencin,  "is  inclined  to  think  it 
would  be  useful  to  put  him  at  the  head  of  his  troops.  Not,  between 
ourselves,  that  he  is  fit  to  command  a  company  of  grenadiers;  but 
his  presence  would  do  much;  the  people  love  their  king  from  habit; 
they  will  be  enchanted  to  see  him  take  this  step — to  which  he  will 
have  been  incited.  His  troops  will  do  their  duty  better;  and  the 
generals  will  not  dare  openly  to  neglect  theirs  any  longer." 

I  might  multiply  these  crushing  quotations  : 
"Nothing  in  this  world  resembles  the  king,"  she 
writes,  summing  him  up  in  one  sentence.  Such  was 
Louis  XV,  in  his  full  force  and  virility,  on  the  eve  of 
what  the  people  were  about  to  call  his  heroism. 

The  young  king,  who  was  sickly  for  a  long  time 
in  childhood,  and  whose  life  seemed  to  hang  by  a 
thread,  was  brought  up  with  excessive  precautions; 
all  effort  was  spared  him,  more,  even,  than  is  usually 
spared  a  prince.  Cardinal  de  Fleury  directed  his  edu- 
cation wholly  in  the  line  of  indolence  and  effeminacy. 
That  old  man  of  over  eighty,  partly  from  habit,  partly 
from  wiliness,  kept  his  royal  pupil  perpetually  in 
leading-strings;   turning  him  aside  from  all  that  re- 


XOUlS  XV.  445 

sembled  an  idea  or  an  enterprise,  watchful  to  uproot 
in  him  the  least  volition  or  desire;  thus  he  had 
accustomed  him  to  nothing  but  the  easiest  things. 
Nature,  moreover,  had  done  nothing  to  help  the 
young  king  to  surmount  this  senile  and  effeminate 
education.  There  was  no  spark  in  him  except  that 
which  early  declared  itself  for  things  of  sense.  The 
young  courtiers,  the  ambitious  men  who  surrounded 
him,  saw  with  vexation  this  tutelage  of  the  cardinal, 
this  insipid  childhood,  this  schoolboy  role  prolong  it- 
self in  a  king  who  was  over  thirty  years  of  age  ;  they 
saw  that  there  was  only  one  means  of  emancipat- 
ing him,  and  that  was  to  give  him  a  mistress.  He 
had  had  them  for  years,  but  always  as  a  lad  and 
under  the  good  pleasure  of  the  cardinal  ;  he  needed 
one,  they  thought,  who  would  be  really  mistress,  and 
would  make  him  his  own  master. 

To  this  end  they  managed  matters,  and  it  may  be 
said  that  Louis  XV  in  this  novel  hunt  had  no  more  to 
do  than  the  sluggard  kings  in  the  other  kind  of  hunts, 
who  shot  the  game  when  it  was  brought  before  them. 
They  aided  him,  for  his  start  in  this  direction,  to 
choose  successively  three  sisters,  daughters  of  Mme. 
de  Nesle,  so  much  did  habit  and  a  species  of  routine 
rule  him  even  in  his  inconstancy. 

Cardinal  de  Fleury  being  dead,  intrigues  were  car- 
ried on  with  renewed  ardour;  the  question  was,  inas- 
much as  the  king  had  no  will  of  his  own,  to  know 
what  hand  would  seize  the  tiller.     It  was  then  that 


446  XOUlS  XV. 

Mme.  de  Tencin,  anxious  to  advance  her  brother,  the 
cardinal,  to  the  head  of  the  ministry,  wrote  to  the 
Due  de  Richelieu  to  urge  Mme.  de  Chateauroux  (the 
third  of  the  Nesle  sisters)  to  "  drag  the  King  from  his 
torpor."  The  idea  prevailed,  and  Mme.  de  Chateau- 
roux did,  for  one  moment,  make  Louis  XV  a  phantom 
hero  and  the  idol  of  the  people.  She  had  heart;  she 
felt  a  generous  inspiration  and  she  imparted  it.  She 
tormented  this  king,  who  seemed  to  regret  he  was 
a  king,  by  talking  to  him  of  State  affairs,  of  his  inter- 
ests, of  his  fame.  "You  kill  me,"  he  kept  saying. 
"So  much  the  better,  sire,"  she  answered.  "  A  king 
must  be  resuscitated."  She  did  resuscitate  him;  for 
a  short  time  she  succeeded  in  making  Louis  XV 
conscious  of  honour  and  scarcely  recognisable. 

We  are  now  not  so  far  from  Mme.  de  Pompadour 
as  we  seem.  This  was  the  king  whom  she  watched 
(while  still  Mme.  d'Etioles)  when  hunting  in  the  forest 
of  Senart,  and  set  herself  to  love.  She  dreamed  of 
Henri  IV  and  Gabrielle.  Mme.  de  Chateauroux  dying 
suddenly  [poisoned,  rumour  said,  by  those  who 
wished  to  keep  her  from  the  king],  she  told  herself 
that  it  was  she  who  should  take  her  place.  A  plot 
was  at  once  laid  by  her  friends.  The  details  are  lack- 
ing, but  what  is  certain  is  that,  with  that  total  want 
of  initiative  that  characterised  Louis  XV,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  do  for  her  what  had  been  done  for  Mme.  de 
Chateauroux  and  her  sisters,  namely,  arrange  the  affair 
for  him.     In  such  cases,  especially  with  princes,  offi- 


XouiS  XV.  447 

cious  go-betweens  are  never  lacking,  Mme.  de  Tencin, 
after  seeing  her  first  instrument,  Mme.  de  Chateauroux, 
broken,  concurred  in  replacing  her  by  Mme.  d'Etioles. 
The  Due  de  Richelieu,  on  the  contrary,  was  opposed 
to  the  latter,  having  another  candidate  in  view,  a  great 
lady;  for  it  seems  that  to  be  mistress  of  the  king  the 
great  requisite  then  was  that  she  should  be  a  lady  of 
quality;  and  the  accession  of  Mme.  de  Pompadour,  nee 
Poisson,  was  a  total  revolution  in  the  manners  and 
morals  of  the  Court.  In  this  sense,  especially,  there 
was  scandal,  and  the  great  shade  of  Louis  XIV  was 
invoked.  M.  de  Maurepas,  with  the  Richelieus  and 
their  class,  revolted  at  the  idea  of  a  bourgeoise,  a  gris- 
ettCj  as  they  called  her,  usurping  the  power  hitherto 
reserved  for  wantons  of  noble  blood.  Maurepas, 
satirical  first  and  last,  remained  in  opposition,  and 
consoled  himself  by  writing  verses  for  twenty-five 
years.  Richelieu,  ever  a  courtier,  made  his  peace, 
and  was  reconciled. 

The  year  1745,  that  of  Fontenoy,  was  for  Mme» 
d'Etioles  one  of  triumph  and  also  one  of  great  meta- 
morphoses. Her  liaison  with  the  king  was  "ar- 
ranged " ;  she  awaited  only  the  moment  of  its  public 
announcement.  The  king  was  with  the  army,  writ- 
ing her  letters  upon  letters.  Voltaire,  who  was  stay- 
ing with  her  at  Etioles,  lent  himself  to  the  pretty  play 
of  Henry  IV  and  Gabrielle  and  rhymed  madrigals 
upon  madrigals.  Bernis,  faithful  to  the  taste  of  the 
day,  addressed  her  as  "that  virtuous  beauty";  with 


448  XOUiS  XV. 

which  title  the  young  Pompadour  made  her  entrance 
into  Versailles  as  one  "  whose  heart  was  taken  captive 
by  a  faithful  hero." 

All  this  seems  strange  and  almost  ridiculous  now; 
but  if  we  study  Mme.  de  Pompadour  attentively  we 
shall  see  that  there  is  truth  in  this  way  of  looking  at  the 
matter,  and  that  it  is  representative  of  the  real  taste  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  Mme.  de  Pompadour  was  not 
precisely  a  grisette,  as  her  enemies  affected  to  say,  and 
as  Voltaire  repeated  on  one  of  his  malicious  days:  she 
was  a  bourgeoise,  the  flower  of  finance,  witty,  elegant, 
graced  with  many  gifts  and  many  talents,  but  with  a 
manner  of  feeling  that  lacked  the  grandeur  and  cold- 
ness of  aristocratic  ambition.  She  loved  the  king  for 
himself;  as  the  handsomest  man  of  his  kingdom,  as  the 
one  who  seemed  to  her  most  lovable;  she  loved  him 
sincerely,  sentimentally,  if  not  with  deep  passion. 
Her  ideal,  on  arriving  at  Court,  was  to  charm  him, 
amuse  him,  by  a  thousand  diversions  derived  from  the 
arts  or  from  the  intellect;  to  make  him  happy  and 
keep  him  constant  by  a  varied  round  of  enchantments 
and  pleasures.  A  landscape  by  Watteau,  games, 
comedies,  pastorals  in  shady  nooks,  a  continual  em- 
barkation for  Cythera,  such  was  her  coveted  frame- 
work. But  once  transplanted  to  the  slippery  ground 
of  a  Court,  she  could  realise  that  ideal  only  very  im- 
perfectly. She,  who  was  naturally  obliging  and  kind, 
was  forced  to  arm  herself  against  enmities  and  treach- 
eries, and  to  take  the  offensive  to  save  herself  from 


XOUiS  XV.  449 

being  overthrown ;  and  later,  she  was  forced  by  neces- 
sity into  politics  and  into  making  herself  a  minister  of 
State. 

She  loved  the  arts  and  the  things  of  the  intellect  as 
no  mistress  of  a  king  had  ever  done  before.  Arriving 
at  that  position,  eminent  but  little  honourable  (much 
less  honourable  than  she  thought  it),  she  at  first  con- 
sidered herself  as  destined  to  aid,  summon  around  her, 
and  encourage,  suffering  merit  and  men  of  talent  of 
all  kinds.  Her  sole  glory  lies  there,  her  best  title 
and  her  excuse.  She  did  everything  to  bring  forward 
Voltaire,  and  to  make  him  agreeable  to  Louis  XV, 
whom  the  petulant  poet  disgusted  by  the  very  vehe- 
mence and  familiarity  of  his  laudations.  She  thought 
she  had  found  a  genius  in  Crebillon  and  honoured  him. 
She  favoured  Cresset,  she  protected  Marmontel,  she 
welcomed  Duclos,  she  admired  Montesquieu  and 
showed  her  admiration  openly.  When  the  King  of 
Prussia  gave  ostentatiously  a  very  modest  pension  to 
d'Alembert,  she  advised  Louis  XV,  when  he  sneered 
at  the  amount  of  the  pension  (1200  livres)  compared 
with  the  "  sublime  genius"  it  professed  to  reward,  to 
forbid  the  philosopher  to  accept  it  and  to  grant  him  an 
annuity  that  was  double  that  sum.  This  Louis  XV 
dared  not  do,  for  pious  reasons,  because  of  the  "En- 
cyclopaedia." It  was  not  her  fault  that  no  one  can 
speak  of  the  "  age  of  Louis  XV  "  as  they  do  of  that  of 
Louis  XIV.  She  would  fain  have  made  this  king,  so 
little  affable,  so  little  giving,  a  friend  of  the  Arts,  of 

VOL.    I. — 29. 


45©  XOUiS  XV. 

Letters,  and  liberal  as  a  Valois.  "  What  was  Francois 
I  like  ?  "  she  asked  the  Comte  de  Saint-Germain,  who 
claimed  to  have  lived  through  several  centuries ;  ' '  there 
is  a  king  I  should  have  loved."  But  Louis  XV  could 
not  bring  himself  to  the  idea  of  regarding  men  of  Let- 
ters and  intellect  as  of  any  importance,  or  of  admitting 
them  on  any  footing  at  all  in  his  Court: 

"  It  is  not  the  fashion  in  France,"  said  this  monarch 
of  routine,  one  day  when  they  cited  to  him  the  ex- 
ample of  Frederick  the  Great;  "  besides,  as  there  are 
so  many  more  beaux-esprits  and  great  seigneurs  here 
than  in  Prussia  1  should  be  forced  to  have  a  very  large 
dinner-table  to  assemble  them  all."  Then  he  counted 
on  his  fingers:  "  Maupertuis,  Fontenelle,  La  Motte, 
Voltaire,  Freron,  Piron,  Destouches,  Montesquieu, 
Cardinal  de  Polignac  "  —  "Your  Majesty  forgets," 
some  one  said,  "d'Alembert  and  Clairaut," — "And 
Crebillon,"  he  added,  "and  La  Chaussee " — "And 
Crebillon  fits,"  said  another,  "he  is  more  amiable 
than  his  father;  besides,  there  is  the  Abbe  Prevost, 
and  the  Abbe  d'Olivet."  "Well!"  said  the  king, 
"for  twenty-five  years  all  that  might  have  been 
dining  or  supping  with  me!  " 

Ah!  all  that  would  indeed  have  been  mightily  out 
of  place  at  Versailles;  but  Mme.  de  Pompadour  would 
have  liked  none  the  less  to  see  them  there,  and  to  have 
brought  about  some  bond  of  opinion  between  the 
monarch  and  the  men  who  were  the  honour  of  his 
reign. 


Xouis  XV.  451 

In  the  entresol  of  her  apartment  at  Versailles,  lived 
Dr.  Quesnay,  her  physician,  the  patron  and  founder 
of  the  sect  of  the  Economists.  He  was  a  very  original 
man;  brusque,  honest,  sincere  in  the  midst  of  a  Court; 
grave,  with  "an  air  of  mimicry,"  and  ever  finding  in- 
genuous parables  through  which  to  speak  the  truth. 
While  the  king  was  above  with  Mme.  Pompadour, 
Bernis,  Choiseul,  and  the  ministers  and  courtiers  who 
governed  with  her,  the  Encyclopaedists  and  the  Econo- 
mists, were  below,  with  Quesnay,  talking  freely  of  all 
things,  and  settling  the  future.  It  would  seem  as  if 
Mme.  de  Pompadour  herself  had  a  consciousness  of 
the  gathering  storms  above  her  head  when  she  ex- 
claimed in  the  famous  words :  Apres  mot  le  Deluge ! 
It  was  that  entresol,  full  of  ideas  and  doctrines,  which 
held  the  cataracts  that,  sooner  or  later,  were  to  burst 
upon  them  from  the  skies.  On  certain  days  round 
Quesnay's  dinner-table  could  be  seen  sitting  together 
Diderot,  d'Alembert,  Duclos,  Helvetius,  Turgot,  Buf- 
fon,  all  that,  as  Louis  XV  said:  "and  Mme.  de  Pom- 
padour," Marmontel  relates,  "not  being  able  to  invite 
that  group  of  philosophers  to  her  salon,  would  come 
down  herself  to  see  them  at  table,  and  talk  with 
them." 

One  day,  when  M.  de  Marigny,  Mme.  de  Pompa- 
dour's brother,  was  in  Quesnay's  apartment,  the  talk 
fell  on  the  Due  de  Choiseul: 

"  '  He  is  nothing  but  a  coxcomb,'  said  the  doctor,  *  if  he  were  a  little 
better-looking  he  would  be  just  made  for  a  favourite  of  Henri  III.    The 


452  Xouis  XV. 

Marquis  de  Mirabeau  [father  of  the  great  Mirabeau]  and  M.  de  La  Riv- 
iere were  present.  'This  country,'  said  Mirabeau,  '  is  in  a  bad  way; 
there  are  no  energetic  sentiments,  and  no  money  to  supply  their  place.' 
'  It  cannot  be  regenerated,'  said  La  Riviere,  '  unless  by  a  conquest  like 
that  of  China,  or  by  some  great  internal  overthrow;  but  woe  to  those 
who  live  here  then!  the  French  populace  strikes  hard.'  'Those 
words, 'says  the  good  Mme.  Hausset,  Mme.  de  Pompadour's  waiting- 
woman,  who  relates  the  scene  in  her  Memoirs,  '  made  me  tremble 
and  1  hastened  to  leave  the  room;  so  did  M.  de  Marigny,  without 
showing  that  he  was  affected  by  what  was  said.'  " 

Join  these  prophetic  words  to  those  which  escaped 
Louis  XV  himself  when  talking  of  the  opposition  of  the 
Parliament:  "Things  as  they  are  will  last  my  time." 
That  was  the  end  of  the  world  to  him. 

Did  Mme.  de  Pompadour  contribute  as  much  as  it  has 
been  said  she  did  to  the  ruin  of  the  monarchy  ?  She 
certainly  did  not  hinder  it.  Yet  the  character  of  Louis 
XV  being  what  it  was,  it  may  have  been  the  best  thing 
that  could  happen  to  such  a  king  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  a  woman  ' '  born  sincere,  who  loved  him  for  himself, 
who  was  just  of  mind,  and  upright  in  heart — qualities 
that  are  not  to  be  met  with  every  day."  Such,  at  least, 
is  Voltaire's  opinion,  judging  Mme.  de  Pompadour  af- 
ter her  death.  In  spite  of  everything,  she  was  cer- 
tainly the  mistress  who  suited  the  reign;  the  only  one 
that  could  have  lessened  the  crying  disparity  between 
the  least  literary  of  kings  and  the  most  literary  of 
epochs.  As  mistress  and  friend  of  the  king,  as  pro- 
tectress of  the  arts,  her  mind  was  wholly  on  the  level 
of  her  role  and  her  position ;  as  a  politician  she  failed, 
she  did  harm;  but  not  more  harm,  perhaps,  than  any 


XOUiS  XV.  453 

Other  favourite  might  have  done  at  that  epoch  when 
France  was  without  a  single  real  statesman. 

Looking  carefully  at  the  condition  of  the  country  at 
the  close  of  the  ministry  of  Cardinal  de  Fleury,  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  avoid  believing  that  if  the  Due  de  Choiseul 
and  Mme.  de  Pompadour  had  not  come  to  an  under- 
standing and  given  some  consistency  and  some  se- 
quence to  the  policy  of  France,  the  Revolution,  or  rather 
the  social  dissolution,  would  have  taken  place  thirty 
years  earlier  than  it  did,  so  nerveless  were  all  the 
powers  of  the  State.  And  at  that  time,  the  nation,  the 
men  of '  89,  who  were  being  trained,  by  the  sight  of 
all  this  baseness,  to  a  love  of  the  public  good,  would 
not  have  been  ready  to  gather  up  the  fragments  of  the 
old  inheritance  while  giving  the  signal  for  the  new  era. 

Louis  XV,  contemptible  as  he  was  in  character,  was 
not  without  intelligence  or  good  sense.  Many  clever 
sayings  of  his  are  quoted;  piquant  and  sometimes 
shrewd  repartees,  such  as  the  princes  of  the  house  of 
Bourbon  are  noted  for.  He  seems  to  have  had  good 
judgment,  if  that  term  is  not  too  exalted  to  signify  the 
sort  of  immobility  and  sloth  in  which  he  liked  to  keep 
his  mind;  but  what  he  wanted,  above  all,  was  to  be 
governed.  He  was  a  Louis  XIII  transplanted  into  the 
eighteenth  century  with  all  the  vices  of  his  time;  as 
feeble,  as  cowardly,  and  much  less  chaste  than  his  an- 
cestor; and  who  never  found  his  Richelieu.  He  could 
not  have  found  him  except  in  a  handsome  woman;  and 
such  combinations — that  of  the  genius  of  a  Richelieu 


454  XOUlS  XV. 

in  the  body  of  a  Pompadour  are  not,  perhaps,  in  the 
order  of  things  possible.  Yet,  at  a  certain  moment, 
Mme.  de  Pompadour  knew  that  her  role  as  mistress  was 
ended;  she  felt  there  was  but  one  sure  means  of  main- 
taining her  influence, — that  of  being  the  necessary 
friend  and  minister,  the  one  who  could  relieve  the  king 
of  the  trouble  of  willing  in  the  affairs  of  State.  She  then 
became  such  or  as  nearly  such  as  the  circumstances 
required  of  her;  she  forced  her  nature,  which  was  far 
more  fitted  for  the  government  of  little  coteries  and 
minor  pleasures. 

Here  mythology  ceases  and  history  begins,  an  igno- 
ble history!  After  she  had  made  the  king  dismiss 
MM.  d'Argenson  and  de  Machault,  she  governed  con- 
jointly with  M.  de  Bernis  and  M.  de  Choiseul.  Then 
it  was  that  the  world  saw  the  political  system  of  Europe 
overturned,  the  ancient  alliances  of  France  set  aside, 
and  a  whole  series  of  great  events  lying  at  the  mercy 
of  the  inclinations,  the  antipathies,  the  frail  and  egotisti- 
cal good  sense  of  a  charming  woman. 

Then  was  seen  a  most  singular  spectacle:  that  of  an 
heroic  and  cynical  King  of  Prussia  in  a  struggle  with 
three  women,  three  sovereigns  rabid  for  his  ruin,  whom 
he  characterised,  all  three  of  them,  energetically — the 
Empress  Elizabeth  of  Russia,  the  Empress  Maria  The- 
resa, and  Mme.  de  Pompadour,  dealing  with  them 
as  a  man  who  is  accustomed  neither  to  love  the  sex 
nor  fear  it.  Louis  XV  said  naively  of  that  king,  whose 
ally  he  had  not  known  how  to  be,  and  of  whom  he 


XOUiS  XV.  455 

was  so  often  the  humiliated  and  defeated  enemy :  "He 
is  a  crazy  man  who  will  risi<;  his  all  on  the  cast  of  a  die, 
and  who  may  win  the  game,  though  he  is  without 
religion,  morals,  or  principles."  It  is  amusing  to  see 
that  Louis  XV  thought  he  himself  had  more  morals 
and  principles  than  Frederick;  and  he  did  have,  in  fact, 
rather  more,  inasmuch  as  he  believed  he  had. 

The  state  of  public  opinion  in  France  at  the  beginning 
of  this  Seven  Years'  War,  so  lightly  undertaken,  was 
not  what  it  became  a  year  later.  The  new  alliance 
with  Austria,  conceived  in  defiance  of  the  old  historical 
maxims,  filled  all  minds  and  flattered  all  hopes.  The 
Empress  Maria  Theresa,  in  her  passionate  and  cour- 
ageous struggle  against  the  aggrandisement  of  Prussia, 
employed  special  coquetry  in  her  endeavour  to  win 
France,  not  disdaining  to  make  herself  the  "  friend  "  of 
Mme  de  Pompadour;  and  the  decision  was  formed  at 
Versailles  to  "be  for  Austria  "  precisely  as  we  declare 
for  friends  against  all  opponents  in  some  society  or 
coterie  quarrel.  Bernis,  Mme.  de  Pompadour's  right 
hand,  was  recalled  from  Venice  and  ordered  to  draw 
up  and  negotiate  the  treaty  of  alliance.  In  spite  of  his 
first  objections  as  a  man  of  sense,  he  did  not  long  resist 
the  general  movement  that  carried  away  the  whole 
community;  he  was  dazzled  himself,  and  finally  be- 
lieved that  he  was  furthering  the  greatest  political 
transaction  since  the  days  of  Richelieu. 

The  history  of  the  change  that  one  year  brought 
about  in  the  minds  of  every  one,  more  particularly  in 


4S6  XOUiS  XV. 

his  own,  can  best  be  understood  from  the  letters  of 
Bernis,  then  minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  to  the  Comte 
de  Stainville  (afterwards  Due  de  Choiseul),  ambassador 
to  Rome.  The  war  began  by  successes:  the  taking 
of  Port-Mahon,  the  victory  of  Hastenbach,  the  early 
advantages  of  the  Due  de  Richelieu,  seemed  to  promise 
an  easy  victory  to  the  new  diplomatic  combination. 
Bernis  kept  all  such  hopes  until  the  moment  when  the 
Due  de  Richelieu  concluded  with  the  Duke  of  Cum- 
berland the  hasty  convention  of  Kloster-Zeven,  Sep- 
tember 8,  1757.  From  that  moment  the  chances  of 
war  turned  and  became  unfavourable.  Three  months 
later,  (December  13th)  Bernis  writes  to  Choiseul: 

"  One  does  not  die  of  grief,  inasmuch  as  I  am  not  dead  since  Sep- 
tember 8.  The  blunders  committed  since  that  date  have  been  heaped 
up  in  such  a  way  that  one  can  hardly  explain  them  except  by  sup- 
posing evil  intentions.  I  have  talked  with  the  greatest  force  to  God 
and  his  Saints  ( Louis  XV ).  I  produce  a  slight  rising  of  the  pulse,  and 
then  the  lethargy  returns;  great  sad  eyes  are  turned  upon  me,  and  all 
is  said." 

He  sees  that  there  is  neither  king,  nor  generals,  nor 
ministers,  and  the  charge  seems  to  him  so  just  that  he 
consents  to  be  included  in  the  category  of  those  who 
do  not  exist: 

"  I  seem  to  myself  to  be  the  minister  of  the  Foreign  Affairs  of  Limbo. 
Try  and  see,  my  dear  count,  whether  you  can  do  better  than  1  in  kin- 
dling the  spark  of  life,  which  is  being  extinguished  here.  As  for  me,  I 
have  dealt  all  my  great  blows;  henceforth  1  shall  take  the  course  of  be- 
coming paralysed  like  the  rest  in  regard  to  feeling,  without  ceasing 
to  do  my  duty  as  a  good  citizen  and  an  honest  man." 


XOUtS  XV.  457 

In  France,  at  this  date,  there  was  no  direction,  no 
management,  no  control,  either  in  the  armies  or  in  the 
Cabinet.  Insubordination  and  want  of  discipline  were 
everywhere ;  no  one  was  either  feared  or  obeyed.  The 
rivalry  and  disunion  of  the  Due  de  Richelieu  and  the 
Prince  de  Soubise  led  to  the  disasters  at  the  end  of 
the  campaign.  In  the  midst  of  these  reverses,  which 
affected  so  deeply  the  military  honour  of  France  and 
the  future  of  the  monarchy,  Louis  XV  remained  totally 
apathetic: 

"  There  is  no  other  such  instance  of  playing  a  vast  game  with  as 
much  indifference  as  he  would  show  to  a  game  of  cards.  .  .  .  Sen- 
sitive, and,  if  I  may  dare  to  say  it,  sensible  as  I  am,  1  am  dying  on  the 
rack,  and  my  martyrdom  is  useless  to  the  State.  .  .  .  May  it  please 
God  to  send  us  a  will  of  some  kind,  or  some  one  who  will  have  it  for 
us!     I  would  be  his  valet,  with  all  my  heart.     .     .     ." 

It  is  not  possible,  even  after  the  lapse  of  a  century, 
to  read  a  certain  letter  from  Bernis  to  Choiseul  ( March 
31,  1758, )  without  blushing.  Never  was  the  deca- 
dence of  the  monarchy  of  Louis  XV  so  bare  to  sight; 
we  feel,  from  the  very  character  of  the  evil,  that  the 
dissolution  of  everything  was  near  at  hand:  "We 
must  change  our  moral  habits,"  he  cries,  "and  that 
work  which  demands  centuries  in  other  lands  could 
be  done  in  a  year  in  this  land,  if  there  were  doers  to 
do  it."  That  remark  is  profoundly  true,  applying,  I 
do  not  say  to  morals,  but  to  the  sentiments  and  to  the 
spirit  of  our  nation,  which  we  have  seen,  more  than 
once,  completely  reversed,  in  a  moment  of  time, 
under  the  impulsion  of  a  powerful  mind.     In  Paris, 


458  XOUiS  XV. 

the  exasperation  of  the  public  mind  had  reached  a 
climax  in  that  summer  of  1758: 

"I  am  threatened,  in  anonymous  letters,"  writes 
Bernis,  "to  be  torn  in  pieces  by  the  populace,  and 
though  I  do  not  fear  such  threats,  it  is  certain  that 
coming  evils,  which  all  can  foresee,  may  easily  realise 
them.  Our  friend  [Mme.  de  Pompadour]  "runs 
quite  as  much  risk  as  any  of  us." 

There  were  two  distinct  epochs  in  Mme.  de  Pom- 
padour's career  and  influence:  the  first,  the  most 
brilliant  and  the  most  favoured,  was  on  the  morrow 
of  the  Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  (1748):  then  she  was 
completely  in  her  role  as  a  young,  adored  woman; 
happy  in  the  peace,  in  the  arts,  in  the  pleasures  of  the 
mind,  protecting  and  counselling  all  fortunate  things. 
Then  came  the  second  epoch,  very  confused,  but  chiefly 
fatal  and  disastrous;  this  was  the  whole  period  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War;  the  period  of  Damiens'  attempt 
on  the  king's  life,  the  defeat  at  Rosbach,  and  the 
victorious  insults  of  Frederick  the  Great.  These  were 
hard  years,  that  aged  before  she  was  old  this  frail  and 
gracious  woman,  dragged  into  a  struggle  that  was  too 
strong  for  her.  Yet  my  own  impression,  resulting 
to-day  from  a  simple  glance  at  this  distance,  is  that 
things  might  have  gone  even  worse,  and  that  Mme. 
de  Pompadour  aided  by  M.  de  Choiseul,  did,  by 
means  of  the  "Family  Compact,"  redeem  some  of  her 
own  faults,  and  the  humiliation  of  France  and  its 
monarchy. 


XOUiS  XV.  459 

It  would  seem  that  the  nation  itself  felt  this;  and 
felt  it,  above  all,  after  the  brilliant  favourite  had  fallen 
very  low;  for  when  she  died  at  Versailles,  April  15, 
1764,  the  regret  of  the  people  of  Paris,  who  would 
have  stoned  her  a  few  years  earlier,  was  universal. 
One  of  those  who  seems  to  have  regretted  her  least 
was  Louis  XV;  it  is  related  of  him  that  as  he  watched 
from  a  window  the  removal  of  the  coffin  from  the 
Chateau  of  Versailles  to  Paris,  he  remarked  (it 
being  a  stormy  day):  "The  marquise  will  have  bad 
weather  for  her  journey."  His  ancestor,  Louis  XIII, 
said  at  the  hour  of  the  execution  of  his  favourite, 
Cinq  Mars:  "Dear  friend  must  be  making  a  hor- 
rible grimace  just  now."  Compared  with  such  a 
speech,  that  of  Louis  XV  seems  quite  touching  in  its 
feeling. 

The  death  of  Mme.  de  Pompadour  was  a  severe 
loss  to  the  arts,  and  they  have  consecrated  her  mem- 
ory. If  Voltaire,  as  a  man  of  letters,  could  say  of  her 
to  his  friends,  "She  was  one  of  us,"  artists  had  still 
stronger  reason  to  say  it.  Mme.  de  Pompadour  was 
herself  a  distinguished  artist.  Directly,  and  through 
her  brother,  M.  de  Marigny,  whom  she  caused  to  be 
appointed  Superintendent  of  Buildings,  she  exercised 
a  most  active  and  happy  influence.  At  no  epoch  was 
art  more  living,  more  related  to  social  life,  which 
expressed  itself  in  it,  and  modelled  itself  by  it. 
Diderot,  giving  an  account  of  the  Salon  of  1765,  and 
speaking  of  an  allegorical  picture  by  Carl  Van  Loo, 


46o  XOUiS  XV. 

which   represented  the  Arts  in  despair   supplicating 
Destiny  for  the  recovery  of  the  marquise,  says: 

"She  protected  them  indeed;  she  loved  Carl  Van 
Loo,  she  was  the  benefactress  of  Cochin ;  the  engraver 
Gai  had  his  tools  at  her  house.  Too  happy  would 
the  nation  have  been  had  she  confined  herself  to 
amusing  the  sovereign  with  such  relaxations,  and  in 
ordering  from  artists  their  pictures  and  statues." 
Then,  after  describing  the  painting,  he  concludes, 
rather  harshly,  it  seems  to  me: 

"Van  Loo's  Suppliants  obtained  nothing  from  Destiny,  which 
proved  more  favourable  to  France  than  to  the  Arts.  Mme.  de  Pom- 
padour died  at  the  moment  when  they  thought  her  out  of  danger. 
Well!  what  remains  of  that  woman  who  exhausted  us  in  men  and 
money,  left  us  without  honour  or  energy,  and  who  overturned  the 
whole  political  system  of  Europe?  The  Treaty  of  Versailles,  which 
will  last  as  long  as  it  may;  Bouchardon's  Amour,  that  will  be  forever 
admired;  a  few  of  Gai's  engravings,  which  will  astonish  antiquaries  in 
years  to  come;  a  good  little  picture  by  Van  Loo,  which  people  will 
look  at  occasionally,  and  a  handful  of  ashes!  " 

Some  other  things  remained,  and  posterity,  or  at 
any  rate  the  amateurs  who  to-day  represent  it,  seem  to 
ascribe  to  Mme.  de  Pompadour's  influence,  and  to 
range  under  her  name  many  more  objects  worthy  of 
attention  than  Diderot  enumerates.  1  shall  rapidly 
indicate  a  few  of  them. 

Mme.  de  Pompadour  had  a  fine  library,  especially 
rich  in  dramatic  works;  a  library  chiefly  composed  of 
French  books,  that  is,  of  books  she  read,  most  of 
them  bound  with  her  arms  (three  towers),   on  the 


Xouis  XV.  461 

cover;  some  with  broad  lace- work  ornamenting  the 
flat  surfaces  [avec  de  larges  dentelles  qui  ornent  les 
plats].  These  volumes  are  still  sought  for,  and  bibli- 
ophiles give  her  a  choice  place  in  their  golden  book, 
beside  the  most  illustrious  collectors  whose  names 
have  come  down  to  us.  She  carried  her  love  of  this 
art  so  far  as  to  print  with  her  own  hands,  at  Versailles, 
a  tragedy  by  Corneille,  Rodogune  (1760):  of  which 
only  twenty  copies  were  printed.  These  were  mere 
caprices,  some  may  say;  but  they  prove  the  taste  and 
the  passion  for  letters  in  this  woman  who  "would 
have  loved  Fran(;ois  I." 

In  the  Cabinet  des  Estampes  is  a  collection  entitled 
CBuvre  de  Mme.  de  Pompadour;  which  contains  more 
than  sixty  of  her  engravings  and  etchings.  They  are 
for  the  most  part  allegorical  designs,  intended  to 
celebrate  some  of  the  memorable  events  of  the  day; 
but  there  are  others  that  come  more  within  the  idea 
we  have  of  the  charming  artist:  "Love  cultivating  a 
myrtle,"  "Love  cultivating  laurels."  The  Loves 
appear  under  many  aspects;  Military  Genius  itself  is 
represented  as  Love  meditating  among  flags  and  can- 
non. Not  content  with  reproducing  on  copper  with 
acids  the  engravings  of  Gai  on  stone,  Mme.  de  Pom- 
padour seems  to  have  done  some  engraving  herself  on 
delicate  stones — agate  and  cornelian.  Her  etchings, 
at  any  rate,  were  retouched  with  the  graving-tool. 
Here,  as  in  printing,  she  put  her  pretty  hand  to  the 
actual  work;  she  is   of  the  trade;  and  just   as   the 


462  Xouis  XV. 

bibliophiles  inscribe  her  on  their  list,  and  the  typo- 
graphers on  theirs,  the  engravers  have  a  right  to  class 
in  their  ranks,  with  the  title  of  co-worker,  "  Mme.  de 
Pompadour,  etcher." 

The  Manufactory  of  Sevres  owes  much  to  her;  she 
looked  after  it  actively;  she  often  took  the  king  there; 
and  he,  for  once,  felt  the  importance  of  an  art  to 
which  he  owed  magnificent  dinner-services  worthy 
to  be  offered  as  gifts  to  sovereigns.  Under  the  foster- 
ing influence  of  Versailles,  Sevres  soon  had  original 
marvels  fit  to  compete  with  old  Dresden  and  Japan. 
Nowhere  does  the  style  called  "Pompadour  "  shine 
with  more  fancy  and  delicacy,  or  more  in  its 
true  place,  than  in  the  porcelain  of  that  date.  This 
glory  of  hers,  due  to  a  fragile  art,  is  more  durable 
than  many  others. 

While  her  brother,  M.  de  Marigny,  summoned 
Soufflot  from  Lyons  to  entrust  him  with  the  erection 
of  Sainte-Genevieve  (the  Pantheon),  she  herself  was 
deeply  interested  in  the  establishment  of  the  Ecole 
Militaire,  to  which  she  contributed  her  own  money. 
Among  the  very  few  authentic  letters  that  we  have  of 
hers  is  the  following,  addressed  to  a  friend,  the  Com- 
tesse  de  Lutzelbourg,  January  3,  1751 : 

"  I  think  you  must  be  very  pleased  with  the  edict  just  issued  by 
the  king  to  ennoble  the  military.  You  will  be  still  more  so  with  one 
that  is  soon  to  appear  for  the  establishment  of  five  hundred  gentle- 
men, whom  the  king  is  to  have  trained  in  the  military  art.  This 
royal  school  will  be  built  quite  close  to  the  Invalides.  This  establish- 
ment will  be  all  the  finer  because  His  Majesty  has  been  working  over 


Xouis  XV.  463 

it  for  a  year,  and  the  ministers  have  had  no  part  in  it,  and,  indeed, 
knew  nothing  of  it  until  he  had  arranged  it  to  his  fancy.     .     ." 

If  the  king  ever  thought  of  it  alone  and  without  the 
suggestions  of  his  ministers,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  to  Mme.  de  Pompadour  he  owed  the  inspiration, 
for  he  was  not  a  man  to  originate  such  ideas  himself. 
That  this  was  the  fact  appears  in  another,  and  later, 
letter  from  Mme.  de  Pompadour  to  Paris-Duverney, 
who  was  the  one  who  first  suggested  the  idea  to  her. 

"  No,  indeed,  my  dear  simpleton,  I  shall  not  allow  to  perish  in 
port  an  establishment  which  ought  to  immortalise  the  king,  render 
happy  the  nobles,  and  make  known  to  posterity  my  attachment  to 
the  State  and  to  the  person  of  His  Majesty.  I  have  told  Gabriel 
to-day  to  arrange  for  the  necessary  workmen  to  finish  the  work.  My 
revenue  for  this  year  has  not  yet  come  in ;  but  1  shall  employ  it  all  in 
paying  the  journeymen  every  fortnight.  I  do  not  know  whether  I 
shall  find  any  security  for  repayment,  but  I  know  very  well  that 
I  shall  risk  one  hundred  thousand  livres  for  the  welfare  of  those 
poor  lads." 

Such  in  her  prosperous  days  was  this  enchanting, 
ambitious,  frail  woman,  who  was  also  sincere,  who 
remained  kind  in  her  prosperity,  faithful  (I  like  to 
think  so )  in  her  sin,  serviceable  where  she  could  be, 
yet  vindictive  when  driven  to  it;  a  woman  who  was 
truly  of  her  sex  after  all;  of  whose  private  life  her 
waiting-woman  has  left  us  an  account  that  is  neither 
overwrought  nor  crushing. 

That  book  of  Mme.  du  Hausset  leaves  a  singular  im- 
pression; it  is  written  with  a  degree  of  natveU  and 


464  Xouis  XV. 

ingenuousness  which  preserves  a  sort  of  virtue  in  the 
close  vicinity  of  vice: 

"'That  is  what  the  Court  is,  corrupt  from  the 
greatest  to  the  smallest,'  I  said  one  day  to  Madame, 
who  spoke  to  me  of  certain  facts  within  my  know- 
ledge. '  1  could  tell  you  many  more,'  she  said,  'but 
in  that  little  chamber  where  you  often  sit  you  must 
overhear  plenty.'  " 

Mme.  de  Pompadour,  after  the  first  dazzling  mo- 
ments of  her  fairyland  were  over,  judged  her  situation 
for  what  it  was;  and  though  she  continued  to  love 
the  king,  she  retained  no  illusion  as  to  his  character, 
nor  as  to  the  sort  of  affection  of  which  she  was  the 
object.  She  felt  that  she  was  to  him  a  habit,  and  no- 
thing else.  "  It  is  your  staircase  that  the  king  loves," 
the  little  Marechale  de  Mirepoix  said  to  her:  "he 
is  so  in  the  habit  of  going  up  and  down  it.  But 
if  he  found  another  woman  to  whom  he  could  talk  of 
his  hunting  and  his  affairs  as  he  does  to  you,  it  would 
be  all  the  same  to  him  at  the  end  of  three  days." 
Mme.  de  Pompadour  repeated  those  words  to  herself 
as  being  the  exact  and  melancholy  truth.  She  had 
everything  to  fear  at  every  minute,  for,  with  such  a 
man,  everything  was  possible.  A  smile  from  him,  a 
more  or  less  gracious  look  proved  nothing: 

"  You  do  not  know  him,  my  dear,"  she  said  one  day 
to  Mme.  du  Hausset,  with  whom  she  had  been  talk- 
ing of  some  rival  with  whom  her  enemies  were  try- 
ing to  supplant  her:  "  if  he  meant  to  put  her  to-night 


XOUtS  XV.  465 

into  my  apartment,  he  would  treat  her  coldly  before 
the  world,  and  treat  me  with  the  greatest  affection." 
He  acquired  that  dissembling  habit  from  his  early  edu- 
cation under  Cardinal  de  Fleury.  "Ah!"  she  ex- 
claimed one  day  with  a  secret  sense  of  her  misery, 
"Ah!  my  life  is  like  that  of  the  Christian,  a  perpetual 
struggle.  It  was  not  so  with  the  women  who  ob- 
tained the  good  graces  of  Louis  XIV." 

Mme.  de  Pompadour  may  be  considered  as  the  last 
in  date  of  kings'  mistresses,  correctly  so-called.  After 
her  it  is  impossible  to  descend  and  enter  decently  into 
the  history  of  the  Du  Barry.  The  kings  and  emper- 
ors who  have  succeeded  one  another  in  France  until 
our  day  have  been  either  too  virtuous,  too  despotic, 
too  gouty,  too  repentant,  or  too  good  fathers  of 
families  to  permit  themselves  such  inutilities;  at  the 
most,  one  perceives  a  few  vestiges.  The  race  of 
kings'  mistresses  may  therefore  be  said  to  be,  if  not 
extinct,  at  least  greatly  interrupted,  and  Mme.  de 
Pompadour  remains  to  our  eyes  the  last  in  sight  in 
our  history,  and  the  most  brilliant. 

All  this  while,  there  was, — let  us  remember  it  in 
order  not  to  be  unjust  in  our  severity, — there  was  in 
the  bosom  of  that  very  Versailles,  and  of  that  corrupt 
Court,  a  little  reserved  corner,  a  sort  of  asylum  of  all 
the  virtues  and  domestic  pieties,  in  the  person  and  in 
the  family  of  the  Dauphin,  father  of  Louis  XVI.  This 
estimable  prince,  and  all  who  surrounded  him,  his 
mother,  his  wife,  his  royal  sisters,  all  his  household, 

VOL.  I, — 30. 


466  XOUiS  XV. 

made  the  most  absolute  and  the  most  silent  contrast 
to  the  scandals  and  the  intrigues  of  the  rest  of  the 
Court.  It  is  a  striking  contrast  to  compare  his  prema- 
ture end  and  his  death,  so  courageously  Christian, 
with  the  miserable  death-scene  of  the  king,  his  father. 
We  are  told  that  during  his  last  autumn  on  earth 
(1765),  he  wished  to  see  again  the  little  grove  at 
Versailles  which  bore  his  name  and  where  he  had 
played  in  childhood;  on  seeing  the  trees  half-stripped, 
he  said,  with  a  sort  of  presentiment:  "  Already  the 
fall  of  the  leaf!"  Then  he  added,  instantly:  "But 
we  can  see  the  skies  better." 

The  Dauphin,  son  of  Louis  XV,  whatever  homage 
we  may  render  to  his  virtues,  was  not  of  those  of 
whom  we  can  say  otherwise  than  by  a  poetic  fiction: 
Tu  Marcellus  eris.  All  in  him  reveals  a  saint,  but  it 
was  a  king  that  the  monarchy  and  France  required. 
Louis  XVI,  heir  to  his  father's  virtues,  did  not  know 
how  to  be  a  king;  and  nothing  justifies  us  in  suppos- 
ing that  the  father,  had  he  lived,  was  of  the  stuff  to 
make  one.  It  is  clear  to  all,  that,  with  the  death  of 
Louis  XV,  the  monarchy  was  condemned  already, 
and  the  race  cut  off.  Let  us  see  now  how  Louis  XV 
died. 

We  cannot  say:  "Thus  die  voluptuaries,"  for  the  vo- 
luptuous often  end  with  firmness  and  courage.  Louis 
XV  did  not  die  like  Sardanapalus;  he  died  as  Mme.  Du 
Barry  died  later,  flinging  herself  with  clasped  hands 
at  the  feet  of  the  executioner  and  crying  out:     "  One 


XOUtS  XV.  467 

instant  more!  "     Louis  XV  said  something  of  the  same 
kind  to  the  Faculty  assembled  around  him. 

The  man  who  watched,  and  wrote  down  upon  the 
spot,  the  pusillanimities  of  the  king  during  his  last  ill- 
ness was  M.  de  Liancourt,  Grand-Master  of  the  Ward- 
robe; the  same  whom  every  one  has  since  known  and 
venerated  under  the  name  of  the  Due  de  La  Rochefou- 
cauld-Liancourt,  who  did  not  die  till  1827.'  This  was 
the  witness ;  one  of  the  most  virtuous  of  citizens ;  a  man 
of  '  89,  the  kind  of  man  that  was,  at  that  epoch,  being 
developed  in  all  ranks,  but  particularly  among  the  en- 
lightened and   generous  young  nobles.     A  spectacle 

'  This  paper,  the  manuscript  of  which  is  preserved  in  the  Bibiiotheque 
de  I'Arsenal,  is  very  long,  and  gives  a  detailed  account  of  the  base  in- 
trigues that  went  on  around  the  deathbed  of  Louis  XV.  it  breaks  off 
abruptly  before  the  death  took  place.  Only  a  few  brief  extracts,  re- 
lating to  Louis  XV  himself,  can  be  given  here. — Tr. 

"Wednesday,  April  27,  1774,  the  king  being  at  Trianon,  felt  un- 
well, with  pains  in  his  head,  chills,  and  lumbago.  The  fear  he  always 
had  of  being  ill,  or  the  hope  of  feeling  better  by  exercise,  induced  him 
to  make  no  change  in  the  orders  given  the  night  before.  He  started 
for  the  hunt  in  a  carriage,  but  feeling  worse,  stayed  in  the  coach  and 
did  not  mount  his  horse.  He  complained  of  illness,  and  returned  about 
half  past  5  o'clock  to  Trianon,  and  shut  himself  up  with  Mme.  Du  Barry, 
in  the  night  he  felt  worse  and  sent  to  wake  up  Lemonnier 
[his  physician]  and  Mme.  Du  Barry.  Anxiety  and  fear  laid  hold  of 
him,  but  Lemonnier,  who  knew  his  propensity  to  be  frightened  by 
nothing  at  all,  considered  his  anxiety  as  no  more  than  the  effect  of  his 
natural  disposition.  So  with  regard  to  the  pains  of  which  the  king 
complained,  he  reduced  them  in  his  own  mind  by  three-fourths.  This 
is  what  always  happens  to  effeminate  persons;  they  are  like  liars,  who 
by  dint  of  having  abused  the  credulity  of  others  lose  the  right  to  be 
believed  when  they  really  ought  to  be.  Mme.  Du  Barry,  who  knew 
the  king  as  well  as  Lemonnier,  thought  as  he  did  about  the  pains  of 
which  the  king  complained,  but  she  regarded  as  an  advantage  to  her 


468  XOUiS  XV. 

like  that  of  the  deathbed  of  Louis  XV  was  well  fitted 
to  stir  noble  hearts  and  turn  them  sick  at  the  sight 
of  such   base   intrigues.     If  we  wish   to  know  the 

all  the  care  she  could  give  him,  and  the  solicitude  she  could  show  for 
him.     .     .     . 

"  It  got  to  be  three  o'clock,  and  no  one  had  been  admitted  to  the 
king's  room.  It  was  only  imperfectly  known  that  he  was  not  well, 
but  by  the  little  news  that  transpired  people  judged  it  was  merely  a 
slight  indisposition.  Mme.  Du  Barry  had  informed  M.  d'Aiguillon 
( prime  minister,  whose  tool  she  was),  who  was  at  Versailles,  and  by 
his  advice  she  formed  the  project  of  keeping  the  king  at  Trianon  as 
long  as  his  indisposition  lasted.  By  this  means  she  would  be  enabled 
to  spend  more  time  alone  with  him,  and,  more  than  that,  to  gratify  her 
aversion  to  M.  le  Dauphin,  Mme.  la  Dauphine,  and  Mesdames  [the 
king's  daughters],  by  keeping  the  king  away  from  them,  and  render- 
ing their  conduct  toward  him  embarrassing  to  them.  The  uncer- 
tainty felt  by  Lemonnier  as  to  the  result  of  this  indisposition,  the 
inconvenience  of  the  service  in  so  small  a  room,  the  scandal  and  in- 
decency to  which  this  prolonged  stay  would  give  rise — nothing  of  all 
this  could  turn  Mme.  Du  Barry  from  this  unreasonable  and  indecent 
project,  formed  especially  to  defy  the  royal  family.     .     .     . 

"  When  I  say  that  Mme.  Du  Ban-y  willed,  I  mean  that  M.  d'Aiguillon 
willed,  for  this  woman,  like  three-quarters  of  the  women  of  her  kind, 
had  no  will.  All  her  wills  were  fancies,  and  all  those  fancies  were 
diamonds,  ribbons,  money.  The  homage  of  all  France  would  have 
been  quite  indifferent  to  her.  She  was  wearied  by  the  business  her 
odious  favourite  (Aiguillon)  wished  her  to  attend  to,  and  had  no 
pleasure  except  in  squandering  on  gowns  and  jewels  the  millions  which 
the  business  of  the  controller-general  supplied  to  her  in  profusion. 
Whether  from  fear,  liking,  or  weakness,  she  was  given  over  to  the 
despotic  will  of  M.  d'Aiguillon,  who  employed  her  to  assist  him  in 
wreaking  vengeance  on  his  enemies,  and  otherwise  using  for  his  own 
ends  all  the  influence  she  possessed  over  the  apathetic  weakness  of  the 
king.     ... 

"  However,  the  fever  continued  during  the  night  with  some  force;  it 
even  increased;  the  pains  in  the  head  grew  worse,  and  it  was  announced 
that  at  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  king  would  be  bled.    .    .     . 

"It  was  now  midday;  the  doctors  who  had  been  summoned  began  to 


Xouis  XV.  469 

Due  de  La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,  the  results  of  his 
life  can  be  seen  everywhere,  his  memory  lives  again 
in  numerous  institutions  of  benevolence.     It  was  he 

appear.  We  of  the  wardrobe  were  also  called  in.  I  found  the  king 
surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  physicians  and  surgeons,  all  of  whom  he 
was  questioning  with  indescribable  anxiety  and  lack  of  courage  about 
his  state,  about  the  progress  of  his  illness,  about  the  remedies  they 
would  give  him  in  such  or  such  a  case.  The  doctors  reassured  him, 
and  diagnosed  his  illness  as  catarrhal  fever.  But  they  showed  much 
more  uneasiness  in  the  way  they  treated  him  than  in  what  they  said; 
They  had  already  announced  that  they  should  make  the  second  bleed- 
ing at  half  past  three  o'clock;  and  perhaps  a  third  at  midnight,  or  early 
next  morning,  if  the  second  did  not  relieve  the  pains  in  the  head.  The 
king,  whose  repeated  questions  had  driven  the  doctors  to  make  him 
this  answer,  showed  much  displeasure:  '  A  third  bleeding!  '  he  said; 
'  why  that  means  an  illness !  A  third  bleeding  will  bring  me  very  low ; 
1  will  not  have  a  third  bleeding.      Why  this  third  bleeding  ?     .      .      . 

"  The  cowardice  of  the  doctors  which  made  them  give  up  the  third 
bleeding  if  the  second  did  not  produce  great  relief,  did  not  prevent  them 
from  thinking  it  would  probably  be  necessary;  and  to  satisfy  both  their 
promise  and  their  conscience,  they  decided  to  make  the  second  bleed- 
ing so  abundant  that  it  would  take  the  place  of  a  third.  Consequently, 
they  drew  from  the  king  the  amount  of  four  \arge  palettes  full.  Kings 
must  be  accustomed  to  see  their  fame  and  their  health  the  plaything  of 
the  intrigues  and  self-interest  of  all  who  surround  them.  The  king  again 
showed  himself  for  just  what  he  was  during  and  before  this  bleeding; 
his  fear,  his  pusillanimity  were  inconceivable;  he  had  vinegar  brought 
to  hold  under  his  nose,  and  said,  when  he  saw  the  surgeon  approach, 
that  he  should  faint;  he  made  four  men  hold  him,  and  gave  his  pulse 
to  all  the  Faculty  to  feel,  asking  the  same  questions  of  the  doctors  at 
every  instant:  about  his  illness,  about  the  remedies,  about  his  state: 
'  You  tell  me  I  am  not  so  ill,  and  that  1  shall  get  well  soon,'  he  said 
to  them,  '  but  you  do  not  believe  a  word  of  it  ;  you  ought  to  tell  me.' 
They  protested  that  they  were  telling  him  the  truth ;  but  for  all  that  the 
king  did  not  whine,  nor  complain,  nor  cry  out  the  less.  His  fears  and 
his  terror  were  not  those  of  a  touching  anxiety,  but  those  of  a  cowardly 
and  revolting  weakness.     . 

"  The  quantity  of  doctors  who  surrounded  him  had  made  me  pity  him 


47°  Xouis  XV. 

who,  thanks  to  his  office  as  Grand-Master  of  the  Ward- 
robe, entered  the  bedroom  of  Louis  XVI  in  the  middle 
of  the  night,  and  woke  him  to  tell  him  of  the  taking 

earlier  in  the  day.  Fourteen  persons,  each  of  whom  had  the  right  to 
approach  and  examine  the  patient,  seemed  to  me  a  positive  torture. 
But  the  I<ing  did  not  think  so;  anxiety  and  fear  made  the  importunity 
precious  to  him.  The  Faculty  was  composed  of  six  physicians,  five 
surgeons,  and  three  apothecaries;  he  would  have  liked  to  see  the  num- 
ber increased.  He  made  all  fourteen  of  them  feel  his  pulse  six  times  an 
hour;  and  if  the  whole  of  the  numerous  Faculty  were  not  in  the  room 
he  sent  for  those  who  were  absent,  that  he  might  be  constantly  sur- 
rounded by  all  of  them;  as  if  he  hoped  that  with  such  satellites  disease 
would  not  dare  to  approach  his  Majesty,  I  shall  never  forget  that  when 
Lemonnier  told  him  it  was  necessary  to  show  his  tongue,  he  stuck  it 
out  at  its  full  length,  putting  his  hands  before  his  eyes  because  the  light 
hurt  them,  and  he  kept  it  out  more  than  six  minutes,  only  drawing  it 
in  to  say  (after  Lemonnier's  examination):  'Your  turn,  Lassonne': 
'  Yours,  Borden  ':  Yours,  Lorry  ':  '  Yours,  and  yours,' — until  he  had 
called  up,  one  by  one,  all  the  doctors,  who  each  testified  in  his  own 
manner  the  satisfaction  he  felt  at  seeing  the  beauty  and  colour  of  that 
precious  and  royal  morsel.  It  was  the  same  a  moment  later,  with  his 
stomach,  which  it  was  necessary  to  feel;  he  made  each  physician,  each 
surgeon,  each  apothecary  defile  before  it,  submitting  eagerly  to  the  ex- 
amination, and  calling  them  up,  one  after  the  other,  in  order. 

"  It  was  now  ten  o'clock  at  night.  The  king  had  been  changed  from 
his  large  bed  to  a  small  one,  for  the  convenience  of  taking  care  of  him. 
His  debility,  his  pains,  his  sluggishness  were  increasing;  and,  in  spite  of 
the  opinion  held  by  all  of  his  fears  and  his  timidity,  it  seemed  very  evi- 
dent that  he  was  at  the  beginning  of  some  great  illness.  All  Versailles 
was  convinced  of  this,  except  those  who  chose  not  to  be.  The  doctors 
were  equally  convinced,  and  their  silence  showed  it.  They  spoke  only 
to  each  other,  and  they  put  off  pronouncing  an  opinion  on  the  nature 
of  the  illness  till  the  morrow. 

' '  The  royal  family,  very  uneasy,  came  back  after  their  supper  to  see  the 
king,  and  were  preparing  to  remain  very  late  in  a  side  chamber  to  see 
how  the  night  would  turn,  when,  all  of  a  sudden,  the  light  brought 
close  to  the  king's  face  without  the  usual  precaution,  revealed  red 
blotches  on  his  forehead  and  cheeks.      The  doctors  who  surrounded 


Xouis  XV.  471 

of  the  Bastille :  "  Why,  it  is  a  revolt !  "  cried  the  king : 
"No,  sire,"  he  answered,  "it  is  a  revolution."  Such 
was  the  man   who,   young   and  condemned   by  the 

the  bed,  when  they  saw  those  blotches,  some  of  which  had  risen  above 
the  skin  in  pustules,  looked  at  one  another  with  one  accord,  and  their 
astonishment  was  a  confession  of  their  ignorance.  Lemonnier  had  seen 
the  king  for  four  days  with  pains  m  his  loins,  with  faintness  and  nausea, 
and  the  other  four  had  seen  those  symptoms  increasing  since  midday, 
yet  none  of  them,  in  spite  of  the  feeling  of  the  pulse,  had  suspected  that 
the  disease  could  be  smallpox.  Every  one  in  the  room  saw  it  at  that 
moment,  and  it  was  needless  to  be  a  doctor  to  be  convinced  of  it. 

"  The  doctors  left  the  room  immediately,  and  announced  to  the  royal 
family  the  nature  of  the  illness,  saying  that  it  was  well  understood,  that 
the  king  was  well  prepared  for  it,  and  that  all  would  go  right.  The 
first  care  of  every  one  was  to  induce  M.  le  Dauphin,  who  had  never  had 
the  smallpox,  to  leave  the  apartment.  Mme.  la  Dauphine  took  him 
away.  Ni,  le  Comte  de  Provence,  M.  le  Comte  d'Artois  and  their 
wives  went  away  also.  Mesdames  alone  remained.  They  had  never 
had  the  smallpox  either,  and  they  were  afraid  of  it;  but  they  would 
not  yield  to  the  representations  we  made  to  them;  they  showed  them- 
selves immovable  in  the  purpose  they  had  formed  of  not  abandoning 
their  father.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  this  act  of  filial  piety  excited 
very  little  public  interest.  Those  who  spoke  of  it  contented  themselves 
by  saying  it  was  very  right;  but  three-quarters  of  the  people  never  spoke 
or  thought  of  it  at  all.  This  indifference,  this  coldness  to  an  action 
that  was  truly  fine  and  touching,  and  one  they  would  have  highly 
praised  in  private  persons,  was  produced  by  the  dull,  meagre  lives  of 
Mesdames,  who  were  known  to  be  without  desires  for  good,  without 
soul,  without  character,  without  sincerity,  without  love  for  their  father. 
People  were  convinced  that  it  was  either  to  make  themselves  talked  of, 
or  else  mechanically  that  they  subjected  themselves  to  so  evident  a 
danger.  Their  customary  idleness  made  some  persons  think  they  did 
it  for  an  occupation;  others  believed  that  Mme.  de  Narbonne  and  Mme. 
de  Durfort,  two  well-known  intriguers,  had  urged  Madame  Adelaide 
and  Madame  Victoire  to  this  conduct,  hoping  to  gain  in  the  end  some 
good  from  it  themselves;  as  for  Madame  Sophie,  who  was  a  species  of 
automaton,  as  lacking  in  mind  as  she  was  in  character,  she  followed, 
with  her  usual  apathy,  the  will  and  projects  of  her  sisters. 

"  But  the  best  reason  of  all  for  the  little  impression  made  upon  the 


472  X0Ui5  XV. 

duties  of  his  oifice  to  witness  the  last  moments  of 
Louis  XV,  was  seized  with  the  idea  of  writing  down 
what  he  witnessed  that  posterity  might  profit  by  it. 

Court  and  upon  Paris  by  the  really  estimable  conduct  of  Mesdames  was 
the  man  himself,  who  was  the  object  of  their  self-devotion.  The 
king  was  so  degraded,  despicable,  so  thoroughly  despised,  that  nothing 
done  for  him  had  the  right  or  power  to  interest  the  public.  What  a 
lesson  for  kings!  They  need  to  learn  that  while  we  are  obliged,  in 
spite  of  ourselves,  to  pay  them  outward  marks  of  respect  and  submis- 
sion, we  judge  their  actions  sternly,  and  we  avenge  ourselves  for  their 
authority  over  us  by  the  most  profound  contempt  when  their  conduct 
has  no  aim  for  the  public  good,  and  is  not  worthy  of  our  admiration. 
But  as  for  this  king,  no  stern  effort  was  needed  to  judge  of  him  as  he 
was  judged  by  his  whole  kingdom." 


Portraits  of 
the  Seventeenth  Century 

By  C.  A.  Sainte=Beuve 

Translated  by  Katharine  P.  Wormeley 

Two  Parts.     Octavo.     With  about  30  Illustrations 
Sold  separately.      Each,  $2.50  net 

CONTENTS  OF  PART  ONE 

Cardinal  Richelieu  Bussy-Rabutin 

Due  de  Rohan  Tallemant  des  Reaux 

Cardinal  Mazarin  Abbe  de  Ranee 

Due  de  la  Rochefoueauld  La  Grande  Mademoiselle 

Duchesse  de  Longueville  Comtesse  de  la  Fayette 

Cardinal  de  Retz  Duehesse  d'Orleans 

Ninon  de  I'Enclos  Louis  XIV. 
Louise  de  la  Valliere 

CONTENTS  OF  PART  TWO 

History  of  the  French  Academy        Bossuet 

Corneille  Boileau 

Mile,  de  Seudery  Raeine 

Moliere  Mme.  de  Caylus 

La  Fontaine  Fenelon 

Pascal  Comte  Antoine  Hamilton 

Mme.  de  Sevigne  The  Prineesse  des  Ursins 

"  The  translator  is  a  true  servant  and  friend,  not  the 
proverbial  tradueer;  none  but  Miss  Wormeley  could  have  been 
selected  for  the  task,  and  she  has  given  of  her  best,  her  inde- 
fatigable, conscientious,  intellectual  best,  which  has  made  her 
the  mistress  of  a  difficult  art." — The  N.  Y.  Evening  Mail. 

Send  for  Descriptive  Circular 


Q.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


By  ELIZABETH  W.  CHAMPNEY 

Romance  of  the  French  Abbeys 

Octavo.     With  2  Coloured,  9  Photogravure,  50  other 
Illustrations,  and  Ornamental  Headpieces 

"  A  delightful  blending  of  history,  art  and  romance.  .  .  .  Many  of 
the  stories  related  are  thrilling  and  none  the  less  exciting  because  they  belong 
to  history." — Chicago  Dial. 

"  The  book  fully  carries  out  the  suggestion  of  Guizot, '  If  you  are  fond  of 
romance,  read  history.'  ''''—Boston  Transcript. 

Romance  of  the  Feudal  Chateaux 

Octavo.    With  40  Photogravure  and  other  Illustrations 

"The  author  has  retold  the  legends  and  traditions  which  cluster  about 
the  chateaux  and  castles,  which  have  come  down  from  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
the  sltillful  touch  of  the  artist  and  the  grace  of  the  practiced  writer.  .  .  . 
The  story  of  France  takes  on  a  new  light  as  studied  in  connection  with  the 
architecture  of  these  fortified  homes." — Christian  Inteliigencer. 

Romance  of 
the  Renaissance  Chateaux 

Octavo.    With  40  Photogravure  and  other  Illustrations 

"  The  romances  of  those  beautiful  chateaux  are  placed  by  the  author,  on 
the  lips  of  the  people  who  lived  in  them.  She  gives  us  a  feeling  of  intimacy  with 
characters  whose  names  belong  to  history." — N.  V.  Mail  and  Express. 

"  A  book  of  high  merit.  .  .  .  Good  history,  good  storj',  and  good 
art." — Hartford  Courant. 

Romance  of 
the  Bourbon  Chateaux 

Octavo.     With  Coloured  Frontispiece  and  47  Photo- 
gravure and  other  Illustrations 

"  Told  with  a  keen  eye  to  the  romantic  elements,  and  a  clear  understand- 
ing of  historical  significance." — Boston  Transcript. 

"  It  is  a  book  that  will  be  read  with  interest  this  year  or  ten  or  twenty 
years  hence." — Hartford  Cotirant. 

Four  volumes.     Illustrated.     Each,  in  a  box,  net,  $3.00 
(By  mail,  $3.25.)   The  set,  4  volumes  in  a  box,  net,  $12.00 


Q.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 


fi 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


'MAY  fi  1 20 


08 


Form 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  446  895    5 


D 
v.l 


ii«a'.V,;,;>;ilrt,'»T',- . 


;  Ta'j-  .Si5^". " 


".vii^ij'--^''*^zV.^" 


OUT-OF-PRINT-BOOKS 

SEARCHED   FOR,  AND   SUPPLIED   BY 
SEVEN   BOOKHUNTERS 

NEW   YORK   CITY    (11)    N.   Y. 
OLD   CHELSEA    STATION,    BOX   22, 

Listing   Fee  !))1.00  Per  Item 
orther  Valuable  Information  40c  (Stamps) 


Sc  r  t  ?  :  ?  c  r  £  •  <  7  : 


